Robots are making French fries faster, better than humans

Agencies | Pasadena      

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Fast-food French fries and onion rings are going hightech, thanks to a company in Southern California. Miso Robotics Inc in Pasadena has started rolling out its Flippy 2 robot, which automates the process of deep frying potatoes, onions and other foods.

A big robotic arm like those in auto plants - directed by cameras and artificial intelligence - takes frozen French fries and other foods out of a freezer, dips them into hot oil, then deposits the ready-to-serve product into a tray.

Flippy 2 can cook several meals with different recipes simultaneously, reducing the need for catering staff and, says Miso, speed up order delivery at drive-through windows.

“When an order comes in through the restaurant system, it automatically spits out the instructions to Flippy,” Miso Chief Executive Mike Bell said in an interview. “ ... It does it faster or more accurately, more reliably and happier than most humans do it,” Bell added.

Miso said it took five years to develop Flippy and recently made it commercially available. The robot’s name comes from Flippy, an earlier robot designed to flip burgers. But once Miso’s team finished that machine, they realized there was a much tighter bottleneck at the fry station, particularly late at night.

Bell said Flippy 2 makes a splash - at first. “When we put a robot into a location, the customers that come up and order, they all take pictures, they take videos, they ask a bunch of questions. And then the second time they come in, they seem not to even notice it, just take it for granted,” he said.

Miso Robotics has around 90 engineers, who tinker with prototypes or work on computer code. One of its next projects is Sippy, a drink-making robot which will take an order from a customer, pour drinks, put lids on them, insert a straw and group them together.