Secretive Seattle startup Picnic unveils pizza-making robot -- here's how it delivers 300 pies/hour

After three years of quietly toiling away on a robotic food system, Seattle startup Picnic has emerged from stealth mode with a system that assembles custom pizzas with little human intervention. Picnic -- previously known as Otto Robotics and Vivid Robotics -- is the latest entrant in a cohort of startups and industry giants trying to find ways to automate restaurant kitchens in the face of slim margins and labor shortages. It's highly variable," said Picnic CEO Clayton Wood. "We learned a lot about food science in the process of developing the system." Picnic invited me down to their headquarters in Seattle's Interbay neighborhood last week for a chance to sling pies with their secretive pizza robot. Walking up to the system, I was taken aback at how unassuming it looked. Picnic's platform had none of the industrial machismo of a Vulcan range. Instead, it looked like a white, kitchen-sized iPhone. Despite the simple exterior, the component parts were mesmerizing -- from the sauce ...