Google is continuing to roll out new features for Assistant whenever a set of them becomes ready and today it's announcing a bunch of updates for Spring 2021. Given how much more we're ordering takeout and staying home, these revolve around simplifying the restaurant checkout process and making it easier to automate your smart home. Google's been using its Duplex AI technology to help it update restaurant business information in Maps, and back when we went out more, it also helped users make reservations over the phone. This week, Duplex will help you complete your payments when you're ordering via a restaurant's website. You'll need to first search for the eatery on the Google App on Android, tap "Order Online" and select your items.

A roving delivery robot made the mistake of dropping off a student's takeout order well-done after it caught fire at the University of California, Berkeley. On Friday, students found a Kiwi delivery robot consumed by flames in the middle of campus. A 30-second clip of the incident shows people looking on, many with their phones pulled out, watching idly as the four-wheeled droid burns, until a passerby finally puts out the flames with a fire extinguisher. Kiwi Campus, the startup behind the device, later explained that the mishap was due to'human error' and that it was removing all of its other robots from operation until it resolved an issue with the device's defective battery. The delivery robots are made by Kiwi, a California-based startup that works out of University of California, Berkeley's startup incubator. Each delivery robot is a tiny, four-wheeled device that's about the size of a small dog.

Now the device works as a waiter of sorts, letting you place a takeout order from any of Amazon's affiliated Restaurants. There are some limitations: You need to be an Amazon Prime member and you can't order anything new -- it'll only let you reorder something you've already had. In effect, you tell the bot what you want by saying "Alexa, order sushi from Amazon Restaurants." It'll pull up your history and suggest restaurants or cuisine types, then list off meals that you've ordered before. After you pick one, it'll place the order and have it sent to your default address. Amazon was likely forced to do it that way to avoid making the process overly complicated, given that takeout orders are hard even for a human.