Robot waiters in Kenya create buzz, and concerns about what it means for human labor.
Robot waiters in Kenya create buzz, and concerns about what it means for human labor.
Industry expert says hospitality has room for mechanized and human labor
In the 60s they had pressurize tubes running to your table with the food. But the person putting it into the tube had to know what table your were sitting at. 70s came around and the process of just yelling out the person's name to come up and get it was found to be more efficient. Don't see how this could be more cost efficient than that - unless it is at a fancy restaurant. Then there are other jobs that the waiter does beside transporting food.
Robots incur more costs when you realise you can always just hire a waiter and not deal with robot maintenance and purchasing costs
It will all boil down to what kind of maintenance is required. A robot for $50k would pay for itself in saved wages in under a year, even less if it collected tips. A lot of smaller diners (Waffle/Huddle/Waddle/etc) typically have super low staffing requirements (line cook + 1 or 2 servers per shift, occasionally more) and could totally use robots due to the simple layout and standardization of the restaurants.
These things need less maintenance as a Roomba, in CA since wages are so high, fucking Denny's has a robot waiter
And the problem with replacing menial jobs is...? Just eliminate all the useless / shitty jobs and move us over to UBI already.
What it means... well, just check Japan. Restaurants where the chefs would be replaced if they could make it automated.
For people that don't want to normalize state propaganda:
https://apnews.com/article/robot-cafe-waiters-kenya-technology-845cbb0bc610ef7f6fcbd86ef05803d2
AP News is basically the only media source I really trust. Their reporting is always factual and with as little bias/editorializing as possible.
Korea will have to come up with solutions as the birth rate has been low for a long time
As a tech enthusiast and software developer I think this is amazing! I would love to have them in my hometown in Spain :)