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Where are all those robots that make us need UBI right about now? A burger flipper bot and a fully automated cashier kiosk seems like something that would preve
by panny 5y ago
Where are all those robots that make us need UBI right about now? A burger flipper bot and a fully automated cashier kiosk seems like something that would prevent McDonald's offering $50 interview payments.
- throwawayboise 5y agoMy guess: it's so far turned out to be impossible to build a robot that works and tolerates the humidity and grease of a kitchen, and has an hourly amortized cost of ownership less than what it would cost to pay a human.
- SerLava 5y agoAnd McDonalds would have to pay for the cost of taking care of the robot
- XorNot 5y agoIndustrial food production has had this problem nailed at scale though. I'm not even sure the technology isn't there - I think there's just not enough people working in the space to find the right design.
- willcipriano 5y agoYou have to sell a lot of $1 hamburgers to recoup the costs on your million dollar hamburger assembly machine.
- Nasrudith 5y agoIndustrial robots work repetitive tasks for high efficiency but have high capital costs. Fast food beat out automat style resturants for several reasons but one of them was the versatility of human labor. It seems to be a case of "we know how to do it but not do it cheap enough to be worth it".
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- vel0city 5y agoFully automated cashier kiosks exist and are available at a lot of McDonald's. From my own anecdotal experiences, the problem is people don't like to use them. There have been several times I've gone to a remodeled McDonald's with several automated kiosks available and usually only one backup register at the counter. There would be a line of people waiting for the human at the register to place their order while several kiosks sit unused. I've experienced a few times of ordering at the kiosk and getting my food before the people I would have been behind in the line even placed their order. This hasn't been for just McDonald's either. I seem to recall seeing a similar setup at a Jack in the Box location before McDonalds started implementing the kiosks. They ended up tearing out the automated kiosks because nobody used them and put back in another manned register because people ignored them. I really wonder what drives people to prefer placing their order with a human being at the register instead of an automated machine. Personally I prefer the kiosks as a well done one sometimes shows options I didn't even know existed and its far simpler to review my order before sending it off. I've yet to have a bad experience with a kiosk, other than one completely crashing halfway through accepting the credit card making me wonder if the order was placed or not.
- throwawayboise 5y agoThe kiosks have a terrible UX, for one thing. Ordering a Big Mac value meal with a drink should take one or two actions, but for some reason it takes about 10. Also last time I was at McDonalds the kiosks were displaying a Windows BSOD.
- gruez 5y agoThey might have terrible UX but the human cashier has even worse UX, especially if you want to customize your order, or want to know what customization are available.
- imtringued 5y agoWhat's so difficult about UX? You just need a machine with a bunch of buttons and a card reader. If someone wants an order not on the machine they can go to the sole cashier the restaurant has hired. https://www.alamy.com/a-japanese-man-purchasing-a-meal-ticket-outside-the-restaurant-before-entering-it-is-a-solution-for-worker-shortage-and-efficiency-in-tokyo-japan-image273629124.html https://www.alamy.com/a-japanese-man-purchasing-a-meal-ticke...