Yahoo – AFP,
14 Aug 2014
Kunshan (China) (AFP) - It's more teatime than Terminator -- a restaurant in China is electrifying customers by using more than a dozen robots to cook and deliver food.
 |
A robot
carries food to customers in a restaurant in Kunshan, China
on August 13, 2014
(AFP Photo/Johannes Eisele)
|
Kunshan (China) (AFP) - It's more teatime than Terminator -- a restaurant in China is electrifying customers by using more than a dozen robots to cook and deliver food.
Mechanical
staff greet customers, deliver dishes to tables and even stir-fry meat and
vegetables at the eatery in Kunshan, which opened last week.
"My
daughter asked me to invent a robot because she doesn't like doing
housework," the restaurant's founder Song Yugang told AFP.
 |
A robot
cooks vegetables in a kitchen of
a restaurant in Kunshan on August 13,
2014 (AFP Photo/Johannes Eisele)
|
In the
kitchen, two large blue robots with glowing red eyes specialise in frying,
while another is dedicated to making dumplings.
Song told
the local Modern Times newspaper that each robot costs around 40,000 yuan
($6,500) -- roughly equal to the annual salary of a human employee.
"The
robots can understand 40 everyday sentences. They can't get sick or ask for
vacation. After charging up for two hours they can work for five hours,"
he added.
The
restaurant, in the eastern province of Jiangsu, follows in the tracks of
another robotic eatery which opened in the northeastern city of Harbin in 2012.
Rising
labour costs in China have encouraged manufacturers to turn to automation, and
the country last year surpassed Japan to become the world's biggest consumer of
industrial robots.
The cooking
robots -- which have a fixed repertoire -- exhibit limited artificial
intelligence, and are loaded with ingredients by human staff, who also help to
make some dishes.
 |
A robot
carries food to customers in a restaurant in Kunshan on
August 13, 2014 (AFP
Photo/Johannes Eisele)
|
But
customers at the restaurant who tucked into fried tomatoes with egg, soup, and
rice were thrilled with the experience.
"My
children are really excited by the robots," said Yang Limei, a mother of
three.
The round-headed
waiter robots can only move along fixed paths, and politely ask customers to
move out of their way whenever their routes are blocked.
"I've
never seen a robot serving food before," said Yuan Yuan, nine. "I'm
really surprised."
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