The rise of restaurant robots is upon us. Major fast-food chains are employing robots to flip burgers, brew espressos and greet customers - and it is a fraction of the cost compared to paying human workers. White Castle is testing the Flippy robot at 100 locations and Chipotle uses a one-armed robot to make tortilla chips at 73 sites - both cost $3,000 a month - and Starbucks has $18,000 AI-powered espresso machines in at least 1,200 locations. As food costs rise and an intense labor shortage grips the US, paying monthly rentals for machines has become a cost-effective option. The National Restaurant Association recently reported that four in five operators are understaffed and have been since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020.

Today, Miso Robotics – the company transforming the restaurant industry with robotics and intelligent automation – launched in the UK by bringing its flagship product, Flippy 2, to a Midlands branch of one of the largest quick-service restaurant (QSR) brands in the world. In parallel to its move to the UK, Miso Robotics extended its Series E round and will now take investment reservations from folks in the region – targeting to raise £1.5 million in capital via European crowdfunding site Crowdcube. Flippy 2, a robotics solution that can independently do the work of an entire fry station, has proven it can improve operations in QSRs by decreasing order-to-delivery time, while increasing food consistency and creating a better working environment for human team members. Flippy is able to manage fry stations, which frees up human staff members to be redeployed and focus on other tasks in the kitchen and restaurant that are more fulfilling, such as interacting with customers in the drive-thru or at the register. With the UK takeaway food delivery market growing from £10.5 billion to £13.3 billion between 2021 and 2022, the industry is facing an employment gap that Flippy can help fill – especially with nearly 150,000 unfilled posts in the hospitality sector in the UK at present.

Nala Robotics introduced the launch of Pizzaiola, a totally autonomous pizzeria robotic that may prep salads and prepare dinner pizzas, burgers, wings and pasta. The 7-axis robotic chef operates in a 12′ by 12′ area. Pizzaiola makes use of synthetic intelligence (AI) and machine studying to exactly replicate pizzeria-style meals. The robotic is ready to prepare dinner as much as 50 pizzas an hour, with 35 completely different decisions of toppings and cheeses, 5 dough sorts and 4 completely different sauces. The system is provided with pure language processing options, so it may possibly reply to voice menu orders.

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Welcome back to Talking Tech. How many of you like Chipotle?

Between the Perseverance Rover's one year anniversary on Mars, new services launching and exciting stories about robots in the field, there was no shortage of things to cover in February. Here are the Top 10 most popular robotics stories on The Robot Report in February 2022. Subscribe to The Robot Report Newsletter to stay updated on the robotics stories you need to know about. When Abundant Robotics, an agricultural robotics company, shut down in mid-2021, it cited a lack of funding and market traction as the two primary challenges. But that didn't scare away product development incubator Wavemaker Labs, which in October 2021 acquired the intellectual property (IP) of Abundant Robotics for an undisclosed amount.

The explosion of true wireless earbuds has finally settled down in recent years. However, this has also meant they're all starting to look and behave pretty similarly. Sony's latest experiment -- its new Linkbuds -- shakes that up with an open-ear design made for ambient sound. The company has attempted to nail open-design buds since 2017, and rival Samsung, to its credit, also tried something similar with its beanish Buds Live. There are a lot of cool features built into these tiny things.

You can count burger-flipping robots as one pandemic innovation that's here to stay. White Castle announced today that it will be bringing Flippy 2, a robot chef that can essentially perform the same tasks as a team of fry cooks, to 100 more locations this year. This amounts to roughly a third of White Castle restaurants nationwide, so it's likely Flippy may become a permanent addition to this burger chain's workforce. Last fall the burger chain first teamed up with Miso Robotics, the makers of Flippy, to launch a pilot program in its Chicagoland location. The company then unveiled Flippy 2, the latest iteration of the chef robot, back in November.

A robot chef named Flippy, designed to cook 300 burgers a day, has been upgraded and can now also fill up baskets of fries and place them in the deep fat fryer. Built by Miso Robotics, a food services startup from Pasadena, California, it is now capable of working an entire fry station and can do twice as many food preparation jobs as the first Flippy, including basket filling, emptying, and returning. White Castle has partnered with Miso on the Flippy project, giving feedback that has allowed the startup to improve the functionality of the product. They deployed the original Flippy to a location in the Chicagoland area in September 2020. Automatic Dispenser for high volume foods: New Automatic Dispenser options make Flippy 2 autonomous.

Miso Robotics the startup transforming the foodservice industry with intelligent automation unveiled the newest model of Flippy, its flagship product, aptly named Flippy 2. Based on key learnings and feedback from innovation partner White Castle, who deployed the original Flippy to a location in the Chicagoland area in September 2020 and plans to expand to additional locations once the pilot is over, Flippy 2 takes over the work for an entire fry station and performs more than twice as many food preparation tasks compared to the previous version including basket filling, emptying and returning. Back-of-house positions at quick-service restaurants (QSRs) have historically been labor-intensive, physically demanding and can be hazardous given the proximity to hot oil and grills in compact kitchens. Flippy 2 looks to alleviate these pain points and create a better working environment for its human coworkers, while also maximizing the efficiency of the kitchen. Recommended AI News: GigLabs Raises $4.5 Million Seed Round Led By Dapper Labs and Panoramic Ventures to Help Brands Launch NFTs Over the course of Flippy's deployment at White Castle, the fast-food hamburger chain has been impressed and pleased with the productivity gains Flippy has brought to daily operations. While Flippy helped team members stay in their designated locations, employees noted during the pilot that there was a need for human assistance on both sides of the robot – from the initial point of contact with the uncooked product to when the cooked food gets placed in the holding area – requiring one or two employees at several steps.

Back in 2020, Miso Robotics teamed up with White Castle to pilot a kitchen robot that can cook sliders called Flippy in select locations. Now, thanks to data and employee feedback gathered from the pilot, Miso was able to create a new version of the machine called Flippy 2, which works faster and doesn't need human intervention. Apparently, one of the main things Miso learned from the pilot was that human assistance was still needed on both sides during operation. Since basket management wasn't automated, human employees would still need to help load the uncooked product and unload the cooked food in the holding area. Miso has designed an "AutoBin" system for the Flippy 2 that solves that problem, specifically for lower volume and specialty foods like onion rings and chicken tenders.