re: dobot, that's an impressive robot arm, and it's even cheaper than what you cited! ($2700 on the product page)
My first thought is why don't we see more food automation? ex. retrofitting these in a mcdonalds kitchen should be in the realm of possibility. Food is my largest expense behind rent and taxes, I imagine the same is true for most.
The fidelity and affordability of these machines has definitely taken a huge leap forward in the past few years. Many will echo "the technology isn't there yet", but it certainly feels like we're on the cusp of full robo revolution. Excited to see how far this will go by 2030.
I thought this was an interesting insight into what a fully-automated grocery store looks like. And also wild to think about how different things are when you design them for automation from the ground up.
I wonder how much of a McDonald’s costs are staff. If most of the cost of a cheeseburger is food costs plus stuff like real estate then it might not make sense to replace the people with robots, especially once you account for needing a few humans to manage the place and maintenance (plus accounting for downtime when stuff breaks).
Yea lots of desktop class industrial arms available in next few years! The mg400 seems like the best value with industrial (rather than educational) in mind.
I’ve been looking at the Epson Scara arms but those go for like 10k I can’t afford it lol.
Yea I see a lot of small startup types but no big chains like macdonalds, even with a POC to fully automate! Surprised Uber Eats isn’t in on it with their ghost kitchens and autonomous car endeavours.
The main ones that seem to be lowest hanging fruit are coffee, pizza, and stir fry.
Also, sushi/maki machines have been widely used for a long time!
I think its 5-10 years before complete automation. We are seeing more partial automation, such as a deep fryer that will automatically lower/raise the fryer basket, and being able to order without needing waitstaff to take the order.
The main part holding it back now is not the capital cost of the equipment, its the NRE (non-recurring engineering) costs in making all of the equipment operate together as there is not a standard platform to make various pieces of equipment easy to plug together.
My first thought is why don't we see more food automation? ex. retrofitting these in a mcdonalds kitchen should be in the realm of possibility. Food is my largest expense behind rent and taxes, I imagine the same is true for most.
The fidelity and affordability of these machines has definitely taken a huge leap forward in the past few years. Many will echo "the technology isn't there yet", but it certainly feels like we're on the cusp of full robo revolution. Excited to see how far this will go by 2030.