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The Chipotle founder's new robot-powered vegan restaurant

3 points by lando2319 3y ago

JoeAltmaier 3y ago
Robot arm? Cute but hasn't food automation gone past that? Dump cooked ingredients down a chute into a cup - that seems simpler. I always imagined the totally-automated fast-food joint would simply limit the menu to what you could deliver with simple ordinary factory automation. E.g. grind meat, mix, deliver measured amounts into a steam-heated cooking mold, decant onto a bun. Squirt condiments as ordered. Drop into a bag and deliver to a pickup window. Live steam cleans the cooking surfaces for the next customer. Nobody in the place, maybe just a low drive-thru experience with a touchpanel or phone-operated ordering, electronic payment, drive up and flash your credential (card/id/whatever) and the right bag drops into the chute. Like automated banking! Why do this? Well, why does anybody do this - cheap fast food. Tasty if you get it right.
- h2odragon 3y ago
  > Live steam cleans the cooking surfaces You worked at White Castle?
  - JoeAltmaier 3y ago
    Flippy! An example of over-literal redesign - replace a fry cook? Make a robot with a spatula arm! Take the next step: a machine to emit fried disks of burger, optimized for energy and low waste. Self-cleaning and a uniform result.
    - h2odragon 3y ago
      Grinding and cutting the meat is already a weird wild mechanical design world of its own; dispensing the paste into uniform small portions is likewise another, separate design discipline that just happens to be stuck on the end of the grinder. Going the next step and cooking the slice as it falls seems quite rational; and we've probably described a machine that already exists. In big bulk continuous flow form. Them little microwave sausage patties prolly aint cut by hand.
      - JoeAltmaier 3y ago
        Again, thinking too literally. Not replacing human techniques; reinvent the whole deal. Deliver ground meat to location, in containers suitable for the robot to dispense. Robot injects it into sealed cooking forms, like injection-molding. Cook and release onto bun. etc.
h2odragon 3y ago
"No animal was required to diminish its dignity for preparation of this meal" Level 4 Veganism? Where Level 7 is "Eat nothing that casts a shadow." It seems to be a sideshow effort in marketing; if you want to feed people more efficiently (time, resources, whichever measure) than industrial TV dinners delivered by the modern commercial grocery store logistics system, you've got a hard fight. The proposed effort only seems to serve the end of marketing to assumed moral superiority and technophilla.

3 points by lando2319 3y ago

Robot arm? Cute but hasn't food automation gone past that? Dump cooked ingredients down a chute into a cup - that seems simpler. I always imagined the totally-automated fast-food joint would simply limit the menu to what you could deliver with simple ordinary factory automation. E.g. grind meat, mix, deliver measured amounts into a steam-heated cooking mold, decant onto a bun. Squirt condiments as ordered. Drop into a bag and deliver to a pickup window. Live steam cleans the cooking surfaces for the next customer. Nobody in the place, maybe just a low drive-thru experience with a touchpanel or phone-operated ordering, electronic payment, drive up and flash your credential (card/id/whatever) and the right bag drops into the chute. Like automated banking! Why do this? Well, why does anybody do this - cheap fast food. Tasty if you get it right.

h2odragon 3y ago
> Live steam cleans the cooking surfaces You worked at White Castle?
- JoeAltmaier 3y ago
  Flippy! An example of over-literal redesign - replace a fry cook? Make a robot with a spatula arm! Take the next step: a machine to emit fried disks of burger, optimized for energy and low waste. Self-cleaning and a uniform result.
  - h2odragon 3y ago
    Grinding and cutting the meat is already a weird wild mechanical design world of its own; dispensing the paste into uniform small portions is likewise another, separate design discipline that just happens to be stuck on the end of the grinder. Going the next step and cooking the slice as it falls seems quite rational; and we've probably described a machine that already exists. In big bulk continuous flow form. Them little microwave sausage patties prolly aint cut by hand.
    - JoeAltmaier 3y ago
      Again, thinking too literally. Not replacing human techniques; reinvent the whole deal. Deliver ground meat to location, in containers suitable for the robot to dispense. Robot injects it into sealed cooking forms, like injection-molding. Cook and release onto bun. etc.

h2odragon 3y ago

"No animal was required to diminish its dignity for preparation of this meal" Level 4 Veganism? Where Level 7 is "Eat nothing that casts a shadow." It seems to be a sideshow effort in marketing; if you want to feed people more efficiently (time, resources, whichever measure) than industrial TV dinners delivered by the modern commercial grocery store logistics system, you've got a hard fight. The proposed effort only seems to serve the end of marketing to assumed moral superiority and technophilla.