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Robotics

Seattle Startup 'Picnic' Unveils Pizza-Making Robot That Makes 300 Pies/Hour (geekwire.com) 70

Posted by BeauHD from the robotic-food-systems dept.
Seattle startup Picnic has emerged from stealth mode with a system that assembles custom pizzas with little human intervention. According to GeekWire, "Picnic's platform assembles up to 300 12-inch pizzas per hour, far faster than most restaurants would be able to make the dough, bake and serve the pizzas." From the report: That speed comes in handy in places where large numbers of orders come in during a rush, such as at a stadium or in large cafeterias. It's also compact enough that it could theoretically be installed in a food truck. Machines have been making frozen pizzas for years, but Picnic's robot differs in a few respects. It's small enough to fit in most restaurant kitchens, the recipes can be easily tweaked to suit the whims of the restaurants, and -- most importantly -- the ingredients are fresh.

There are also a few details that may save Picnic's pizzas from tasting as if a robot made them. For starters, the dough preparation, sauce making and baking -- the real art of pizza -- is left in the capable, five-fingered hands of people. The robot is also highly customizable, comprised of a series of modules that dole out whatever toppings you want in whichever order you choose. Once an order for a pizza has been made, it enters a digital queue in the platform, which starts making the pie as soon as the dough is put in place. The robot has a vision system that allows it to make adjustments if the pie is slightly off-center. It's also hooked up to the internet and sends data back to Picnic so the system can learn from mistakes. The report says their business model is essentially pizza-as-a-service. "Restaurant owners pay a regular fee in return for the system and ongoing maintenance as well as software and hardware updates," reports GeekWire. "The startup has launched at Centerplate, a caterer in the Seattle Mariners' T-Mobile Park baseball stadium, as well as Zaucer, a restaurant in Redmond, Wash."
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Seattle Startup 'Picnic' Unveils Pizza-Making Robot That Makes 300 Pies/Hour More

Seattle Startup 'Picnic' Unveils Pizza-Making Robot That Makes 300 Pies/Hour

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  • Doughmakings the hard part (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @08:51PM (#59259368)
    wake me when it can toss pizza dough. .
    • That doesn't really seem like a hard problem to solve. Tossing pizza dough just uses cetrifugal force (or lack of centripital force if you prefer) to stretch out dough radially while it's in zero-g free-fall. It's difficult for people to do because the person tossing the dough also has to catch it, with hands which have a much smaller surface area than the dough. A machine doesn't have these limitations. You could make a machine which carries dough up to the ceiling in an elevator, spins it up and drops
      • Pizza tossing is only important if you're there to watch not eat the pizza. So maybe in the future, pizza shops will hire human pizza tossers and let the robots do the actual baking. So culinary schools would become more about showmanship than making food taste good.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Blymie ( 231220 )

          I recall 30+ years ago, working at various pizza places, they'd take a ball of dough, and run it through a motorized device to flatten the dough. Basically, two rolling pins that pulled the dough through.

          Run it through 2 times, and it was almost perfectly sized for the tray. The space between the rollers, and the precise mass of the dough, meant that when flattened to $insert_height, the flattened dough would be 12" or 14" or whatever size, mostly circular.

          So.. I don't see how dough is difficult.

          I worked

          • At the most popular local chain around here the show is part of the point. They have like 20 teenagers swarming around behind the counter preparing pizzas, and a platform for kids to stand on so they can see it happen. Some of the guys/gals are pretty good at the pizza tossing and it's fun to watch. It'd be a shame to lose that. (Plus I want my kid to get a job there in highschool!)

        • So like bartending, then.

      • it is very much art, not science. It's surprisingly easy to tear the dough. A good cook just fixes the tear and moves on.

        A robot could do it but the dough would probably have to be changed substantially to prevent that because fixing those little tears would be hard. It requires a deft hand to do it without making another tear.

        Go buy a pizza dough ball from your local grocery story and try it. It's a lot harder than you think.

        Again, it might work with a specific dough recipe, so it might work fo

  • In related news, more restaurants close in Seattle [mynorthwest.com] as a result of their minimum wage hike.

    Popular pizza restaurant Sizzle Pie recently shut its doors in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, citing “continually rising overhead and operating costs in Seattle.”

    Maybe the remaining pizza places can replace some of their now overpriced workers and manage to stay in business.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Gavagai80 ( 1275204 )

        It's so terrible how all this automation has left us grappling with the highest unemployment rates in generations.

        Oh, wait... unemployment is at historic lows and companies can't find enough people to hire. And the jobs being automated are mostly the miserable jobs nobody really wants to do, like fast food or the boring parts of pizza-making. Maybe we shouldn't go smash the machines after all.

        • And the jobs being automated are mostly the miserable jobs nobody really wants to do

          So why do people not quit these jobs and find something better ?

        • The unemployment rate is always a lie.

          The rate reported by the media is the U-2 rate, which misses many people. So sensibly we should at least use the U-6 rate, which still misses people. This rate is still unhealthy, and even it misses the underemployed (who have a job, but it doesn't pay enough to meet their basic needs, so their health is degrading or they're living in their cars. It doesn't count the people who have given up on finding a job and just live under a bush in a state park, either.

          Depending o

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

            • You fail at reading comprehension. I didn't say the dems were angels or that you couldn't blame them for anything. I blamed them for the failure to increase the minimum wage, period. Learn to read if you want to make a contribution. Provide a citation if you want to differ. All you did was FUD.

    • They just have to convince the workers that their job is a "gig" and that they are franchisees.

    • Plenty of other restaurants are doing just fine in Seattle. Sounds like he either didn't raise his prices to account for the minimum wage hike. Or he did and people weren't buying.

      If lots of restaurants were going out of business, I'd say you might have a point. But I'm just not seeing that.

      • Lots of restaurants go out of business all over the US all of the time. It is a really hard business to do well in if you're offering anything other than super cheap chain food with national advertising. Hell, even then that's not always enough. Our local Sonic on the main drag just went out of business last year. Probably 20k-30k people drove by it every day, there were no other fast food places within a couple of miles, and even that wasn't enough to save it.

        More than anything management is usually what c

    • NY Times [nytimes.com] (paywalled, here's Vox [vox.com], the conservative arm of the DNC's media engine, saying the same thing).

      TL;DR;, there were some job losses but the benefits of higher pay offset the downside of the job losses.

      As for a living wage resulting in automation, 70% of the factory jobs lost were due to automation. Automation's coming no matter what. Didn't anyone hear the Ballad of John Henry in grade school? Henry died, and that was against a machine from the 1800s.

      You can't beat the machines. You can r

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Do you believe them when they cite operating costs as the reason? Would they honestly tell you if it was because a better pizza restaurant took all their business?

      Anyway, "rising overhead and operating costs" could be anything, like rent or the fact that the the roads are terrible and deliveries get delayed etc.

      • To answer that, I guess you'd have to read the actual linked article and the rest of the information in there (which is about more than one restaurant) rather than just the single quote from it.

        They do also [mynorthwest.com] blame the collective local regulatory environment as well:

        “Every time I turn around, I’m paying a new tax for a sign permit or an awning or a table outside, B&O tax, sugar tax, a myriad of licenses, elevator permits, health permits, higher property taxes that are passed on in my triple ne

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          So it's tax, not minimum wage.

          • Yeah, the article spends more than half of its paragraphs quoting restaurant owners about their minimum wage complaints, it's titled "Celebrated Seattle restaurant to close, killed by rising costs and minimum wage", but sure, you read that as having no relationship to the minimum wage.

            Somehow still doesn't seem like you even bothered to read the citation given.

  • "Restaurant owners pay a regular fee in return for the system and ongoing maintenance as well as software and hardware updates," reports GeekWire. That's great for people who like getting their balls squeezed until their blue. Fuck that shit.

    • This is how most high end systems work. From the robots that make your cars to the MRIs that scan your body. Been like that for a few decades.

      No one wants to "own" these types of things. That level of investment with the lack of expertise just results in falling behind your competitors because they came later in the game and got more recent versions. Plus the vendor loses incentive to maintain the old ones because it doesn't generate revenue and competes against their latest offering.

  • I'm confused, is this making pizza or pie?

    Seattle Startup 'Picnic' Unveils Pizza-Making Robot That Makes 300 Pies/Hour

    Once an order for a pizza has been made, it enters a digital queue in the platform, which starts making the pie as soon as the dough is put in place.

  • The hardest part is getting the damn ugly bags of mostly water to put the right amount of toppings on the damn thing. The amount of a topping is "variable" based on how full the stupid ugly bag of mostly water thinks the pizza is, with no reduction in the price to compensate for the ugly bag of mostly water ripping you off on your order.

    Hopefully this thing will not suffer from such faults and when you order "double" something, which is twice the price of "single" something, you will actually get "double"

    • It's harder for stuff that's allotted by volume, but you can always ask how many pepperoni slices they put on pizza, then ask for double, take a pic when it arrives, and threaten lawsuit if you don't get them. Make sure to take notes. Granted, that will get you banned, but you don't want to eat there if they can't get your order right anyway, right?

      The only time i even eat pizza any more is lunch buffet. Ten bucks, all you can eat, comes with a drink. I actually find myself eating LESS pizza because it's no

  • MMMM mmmm, tasty. The added grease and oil gives a whole new meaning to flavor and texture. "If you don't enjoy the first one, the second ones' free!"

    I like *MY* gears buttered, thank you very much.
  • Seriously, it didn't pick up the dough from the tray, it didn't hand toss the crust, heck, it didn't even apply tomato sauce... All it did was put a pre-cut crust through a constant speed conveyor belt and added pre-programmed amount of toppings to match the circular crust. Don't think it even used any sensors... Dumb, dumb, dumb, its not even news worthy.

  • Takes fewer people to create more wealth (more things that people want) aster and more cheaply, which is the basis of a standard of living increase. But then, that's fewer jobs.

    OTOH, with MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) [google.com], the central bank could just print up cash and credit our accounts at the Narrow Bank [google.com], so the rest of us could live a life of leisure. Printing money would counteract the deflationary effect of productivity increases. On yet the third hand, this requires relying on politicians to distribute lar

  • I love the concept....anything to make pizza better and cheaper and more accessible. Since I live in an expensive area, local pizzarrias are expensive and unreliable (pizza is late or they sometimes just tell you to get lost when you order because some guy didn't show up for work that day).

    That said, I saw a video of an unimpressive assembly line and a machine that kept dropping toppings and cheese....which is not only wasteful, but unsanitary. We can definitely do better than this as a species.

    • I don't know who exactly will watch that conveyor belt video and want to shower them with money. Also it did a really crappy job with the pepperoni. One side was missing a lot of coverage.

      My new startup leases warehouse conveyor belts at night when they are closed to 'build' pizzas. Win win.

  • No? Then I'm not interested.
    • Just pick the pineapples off your half like the rest of us.
      • Oh and is it cheaper than a human-made pizza? No? Also not interested.
        When it comes to the point where it's all machine-made, then it's really no better than frozen pizza from the grocery store. Do. Not. Want.
  • To give more to the homeless that results from the loss of jobs?
    Wait for a new tax on large cafeterias too. They should be eating in local restaurants.

  • Here's a vending machine from 2012 that does the same thing including forming the dough from flour and water:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyrav_9Pbsc

    No store needed, just a place to plunk a vending machine.

    • Thank you, that's the one I was thinking of. It also has a much better method of distributing the ingredients evenly over the dough, even tough the implementation itself leaves a lot to be desired.

  • Have to imagine the conveyors get fouled up with food particles pretty often and require maintenance. Congratulations, you replaced a cheese sprinkler level of worker with an industrial automation technician. Guess which one costs more! This looks like a bad undergrad term project that went too far.

  • If you're pushing 300 Pizzas/hour I guess this robot might be for you. I don't want to be the guy maintaining it though.

    I still wash my dishes by hand (it's fun), fold my clothes by hand (it's fun ... mostly) and like my Pizzas hand and custom made. However, I'm still on the edge wether I should get a vacuum/floor-cleaning robot or not. My appartment is small enough that one filling would last on a 'bot but that also makes it small enough that my handheld dyson is enough. See some dirt, grab the vacuum, sco

  • "pizza-as-a-service"? No, it's called "leasing" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sabbede ( 2678435 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @08:06AM (#59260502)
    The pizzeria leases the equipment. I don't understand the compulsion to misappropriate terminology like that. Leases have been common practice for generations, and I see no reason to change the terms to suit some reporter's ignorance.

    • They're not doing it to "suit" the reporter's ignorance, but to take advantage of it. Nobody gives two shits about new leaseable restaurant equipment but everyone cares about the latest thing as a service startup.

  • Not the best solution? (Score:3)

    by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @09:17AM (#59260666)

    Pizzas are round but their robot makes them on a horizontally-moving conveyer belt and everything is (roughly/badly) dropped in a grid pattern, meaning the "corners" of the pizzas (when viewed from the ingredients conveyer belts point of view) are basically empty.

    Wouldn't the whole thing be better and faster if the pizzas rotated at constant linear velocity and everything would be dropped evenly?

    This seems like such an obvious problem that I'm wondering why they went the other way instead.

    • Pizzas are not inherently round. Little seizures sells square pizzas in order to reduce their cardboard budget. My favorite pizza growing up was upper crust in Santa Cruz, which made a square pizza with fluffy crust that's now insipid to me. Still better than pizza my ass though, their sauce is like candy.

      If i were automating pizza without a dough tossing step, i would generate square pizzas. People will pay just as much for them.

      • I like the "saves on cardboard" part of making square pizzas. It also saves on space when delivering them and it probably also helps keeping them hot since a smaller box would mean a higher pizza/air ratio.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )

        If you're selling whole pizzas then it's no big deal selling squares, if you're selling slices you now have slices with no crust, one side of crust and two sides of crust. And even if you sell them whole someone will dive in for the best pieces, with a round pizza they're all equal. I think that's why square pizzas are rare, I've only seen it on huge pizzas where the crust area is minimal anyway. Sure if it's cheaper I have no doubt it'll sell, but I understand why they default to round.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by rgmoore ( 133276 )

          It should be easy to cut a square pizza into 8 slices with equal area and equal length of crust. Just cut it in half horizontally, vertically, and on each of the diagonals, and it's easy to see that you have done the job.

          In point of fact, you can cut any regular n-gon into m pieces with equal area and equal share of the perimeter. You just divide the perimeter into m equal lengths and cut from the dividing points to the center of the n-gon. That the perimeter lengths are equal is given; proof that the

  • Business is a heartless business.
  • The robot can work at "The Pie Hole" restarant as per the cancelled subject line TV show.

  • We need these machines, and McD's needs burger machines, everyone needs order taking machines that are much easier to run than the recent McD's machines (It'd take me minutes, and because they put things on burgers by default that I had to remember to take off so's I could get my "ketchup only" burgers I refused to use them again after the 1st couple tries) because if Trump is successful and gets America back to 1965 when 53% of the workforce was working in manufacturing and making traditionally high manufa

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