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A current fully-automated restaurant uses 46 different types of robots [1], costs $29M USD [2] to deliver a 600 seat venue serving a 200 dish repertoire. The op

A current fully-automated restaurant uses 46 different types of robots [1], costs $29M USD [2] to deliver a 600 seat venue serving a 200 dish repertoire. The opex costs on that alone are going to draw out the capex payback quite a bit, before even getting into how the startup cost was around 5-10X conventional restaurants' startup costs. There isn't a Moore's Law for robots and their opex costs that lets us wait around for 10 years and then start innovating at 1/10th cost basis. Someone please correct me where I'm going wrong here, because with my investor hat on, I can't make the numbers pencil out in these pop press robot-replacing-labor scenarios. In continuous manufacturing, high-risk environments, and all that sort of existing problem spaces, sure, but general Moravec's Workforce type activities, the numbers are nowhere near adding up for me. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoZ7lWzl6tk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoZ7lWzl6tk [2] https://www.nspirement.com/2020/09/27/china-just-opened-the-worlds-first-robot-restaurant-complex.html https://www.nspirement.com/2020/09/27/china-just-opened-the-...

lnsru 5y ago
I can only speculate, but the 40 robots does not like to cost more than $4M: https://cobotsguide.com/2016/06/universal-robots/ https://cobotsguide.com/2016/06/universal-robots/ The software can be reused in 2nd restaurant reducing the cost dramatically. And then buying another 10 set of robots reduce unit cost by another ~30%.
- yourapostasy 5y ago
  In the video, they showed a conveyor system with lots of elevator stations, and pull-up dumb waiter stations. Conveyor systems with precise controls like that in general get spendy in a BIG hurry. I also see they don't show how the cleaning robots work; that would be news to me if there is a generalized cleaning robot that does as well as a fast food bus person. I can believe a huge chunk of change was dropped on real estate alone, but there were some pretty specialized robots in that video instead of the universal robots you were pricing out. I'd like the pricing story to change, as I know a ton of households would pay for a general cleaning robot for their homes.

lnsru 5y ago

I can only speculate, but the 40 robots does not like to cost more than $4M: https://cobotsguide.com/2016/06/universal-robots/ https://cobotsguide.com/2016/06/universal-robots/ The software can be reused in 2nd restaurant reducing the cost dramatically. And then buying another 10 set of robots reduce unit cost by another ~30%.

yourapostasy 5y ago
In the video, they showed a conveyor system with lots of elevator stations, and pull-up dumb waiter stations. Conveyor systems with precise controls like that in general get spendy in a BIG hurry. I also see they don't show how the cleaning robots work; that would be news to me if there is a generalized cleaning robot that does as well as a fast food bus person. I can believe a huge chunk of change was dropped on real estate alone, but there were some pretty specialized robots in that video instead of the universal robots you were pricing out. I'd like the pricing story to change, as I know a ton of households would pay for a general cleaning robot for their homes.