2 ms·

"It's going to take about 40-50 years to reproduce what humans can do in a restaurant today with robots." I'm not so sure. Take a look at the machinery that pr

by delinka 15y ago

"It's going to take about 40-50 years to reproduce what humans can do in a restaurant today with robots." I'm not so sure. Take a look at the machinery that produces packaged food now-- it's fairly impressive that every step is automated and human intervention is seldom involved. I don't see a technical reason an entire McDonald's couldn't be completely automated now. If you can analyze and quantify each step in the process, you can build a machine to perform each step. Customers expect to give special orders (hold the pickles, hold the lettuce), but you can provide those options in a software interface. Customers expect handling of exceptional circumstances (the pie is too dry, please replace it), but McDonald's-style preparatory science can help prevent such things (e.g. instead of cooking 12 pies at once, the equipment could cook a pie every few minutes.) I think the biggest problem is customers expecting to give orders in spoken language, but we're having trouble cracking that nut with software (noise, dialects, etc.) Also, there's political backlash for having few (if any) employees.

jiggy2011 15y ago
Why would the robots need to recognize voice at all? Simply have a text menu which could be translated into all major languages and let people pick from that using either their smartphones or wall mounted touch screens.
- delinka 15y ago
  From a technical aspect, they don't need to. But that's what people expect. John Q Public wants what he wants regardless of what the techies think he wants.
  - nitrogen 15y ago
    I've never understood the fascination with voice control. It's clumsy, it's inaccurate, and honestly it's a bit embarrassing to use alone or in public. Yet, "everyone" seems to want it, despite the fact that spatial-sensor-based (e.g. motion sensors, Kinect, etc. -- note that I'm not talking about gestures, which have the same problems with ambiguity as voice) and tactile controls are much more efficient.
    - techdmn 15y ago
      Reading this made me picture trying to drive a car by voice: "Turn left. Left. Further left. More! AHH! NOT SO MUCH!" Here voice control seems like a desire to avoid having to clearly specify your request. "Didn't the car KNOW where I wanted to go? Doesn't this spreadsheet KNOW what numbers I want? Doesn't this fast food menu KNOW what food I want? Maybe if I could just tell it..." I suspect that voice recognition will be popular in the future, but it will seem a lot less sexy if users are still required to clearly specify what they want.
      - nitrogen 15y ago
        You've got it exactly -- the more important thing, IMO, is systems "knowing" what you want, predicting your behavior, in a way that is completely effortless, transparent, and expected. I'm doing that now with my startup, using pre-scripted actions, but hope to see user-adaptive, learning systems (e.g. the Nest thermostat) find their way into everything.
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    Not so sure, people are used to buying allot of things without needing to use their voices. When amazon launched I doubt that the fact people couldn't specify which books they wanted to buy via voice control was a major hurdle. I think the next generation will view buying most things via some text or graphics based menu as nothing unusual at all.
    - delinka 15y ago
      You don't walk into book stores to ask employees for the book you want. You browse, look, read, and finally select a book. No interaction with humans required. (There's human interaction at the point-of-sale, but you still don't have to speak to checkout.) Of course, if they didn't have the book you wanted, you might have to speak to a human to get it ordered ... if they didn't have computer kiosks for you to use instead. Moving this type of sale onto the internet was not a change. Moving the food service industry, where human interaction is expected, into an environment without human interaction goes against people's expectations and habits. Is such a change technically feasible? Yes. Is it practical? Yes. Profitable? Sure, if you can change people's expectations. I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I don't even think it'll be a difficult change. I personally would prefer it. But the first chain of restaurants to offer automated food service (and I do believe it'll need to be a chain) has many psychological barriers to overcome, in its investors and its customers.
- Mz 15y ago
  Simply have a text menu which could be translated into all major languages My understanding is the cash registers at a lot of fast food chains currently use pictures/icons rather than text (and a lot of cashiers can't do simple math for making change if the machine doesn't calculate it for them or there was an error or you would like to change something after the drawer is open). I don't see why this wouldn't work for ordering, and no need to translate into "all major languages".
ghshephard 15y ago
What I think will happen is that we won't reproduce how humans work in an McDonalds, we'll design new packaging/delivery mechanisms so that robots can deliver a Big Mac without having to do things like lift the burger from the freezer to the counter to the heating ovens to the table and finishing in the microwave. Also - I would far, far prefer to order my food from a decent touch screen - I suspect the accuracy would greatly increase. (One of the best inventions ever in the takeout was the video screen showing you what the order taker thought you had ordered)

by delinka 15y ago

jiggy2011 15y ago

Why would the robots need to recognize voice at all? Simply have a text menu which could be translated into all major languages and let people pick from that using either their smartphones or wall mounted touch screens.

delinka 15y ago
From a technical aspect, they don't need to. But that's what people expect. John Q Public wants what he wants regardless of what the techies think he wants.
- nitrogen 15y ago
  I've never understood the fascination with voice control. It's clumsy, it's inaccurate, and honestly it's a bit embarrassing to use alone or in public. Yet, "everyone" seems to want it, despite the fact that spatial-sensor-based (e.g. motion sensors, Kinect, etc. -- note that I'm not talking about gestures, which have the same problems with ambiguity as voice) and tactile controls are much more efficient.
  - techdmn 15y ago
    Reading this made me picture trying to drive a car by voice: "Turn left. Left. Further left. More! AHH! NOT SO MUCH!" Here voice control seems like a desire to avoid having to clearly specify your request. "Didn't the car KNOW where I wanted to go? Doesn't this spreadsheet KNOW what numbers I want? Doesn't this fast food menu KNOW what food I want? Maybe if I could just tell it..." I suspect that voice recognition will be popular in the future, but it will seem a lot less sexy if users are still required to clearly specify what they want.
    - nitrogen 15y ago
      You've got it exactly -- the more important thing, IMO, is systems "knowing" what you want, predicting your behavior, in a way that is completely effortless, transparent, and expected. I'm doing that now with my startup, using pre-scripted actions, but hope to see user-adaptive, learning systems (e.g. the Nest thermostat) find their way into everything.
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  Not so sure, people are used to buying allot of things without needing to use their voices. When amazon launched I doubt that the fact people couldn't specify which books they wanted to buy via voice control was a major hurdle. I think the next generation will view buying most things via some text or graphics based menu as nothing unusual at all.
  - delinka 15y ago
    You don't walk into book stores to ask employees for the book you want. You browse, look, read, and finally select a book. No interaction with humans required. (There's human interaction at the point-of-sale, but you still don't have to speak to checkout.) Of course, if they didn't have the book you wanted, you might have to speak to a human to get it ordered ... if they didn't have computer kiosks for you to use instead. Moving this type of sale onto the internet was not a change. Moving the food service industry, where human interaction is expected, into an environment without human interaction goes against people's expectations and habits. Is such a change technically feasible? Yes. Is it practical? Yes. Profitable? Sure, if you can change people's expectations. I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I don't even think it'll be a difficult change. I personally would prefer it. But the first chain of restaurants to offer automated food service (and I do believe it'll need to be a chain) has many psychological barriers to overcome, in its investors and its customers.
Mz 15y ago
Simply have a text menu which could be translated into all major languages My understanding is the cash registers at a lot of fast food chains currently use pictures/icons rather than text (and a lot of cashiers can't do simple math for making change if the machine doesn't calculate it for them or there was an error or you would like to change something after the drawer is open). I don't see why this wouldn't work for ordering, and no need to translate into "all major languages".

ghshephard 15y ago

What I think will happen is that we won't reproduce how humans work in an McDonalds, we'll design new packaging/delivery mechanisms so that robots can deliver a Big Mac without having to do things like lift the burger from the freezer to the counter to the heating ovens to the table and finishing in the microwave. Also - I would far, far prefer to order my food from a decent touch screen - I suspect the accuracy would greatly increase. (One of the best inventions ever in the takeout was the video screen showing you what the order taker thought you had ordered)