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Robotics

Robots Are Making French Fries Faster, Better Than Humans (reuters.com) 161

Posted by msmash from the cyberpunk-future dept.
Fast-food French fries and onion rings are going high-tech, thanks to a company in Southern California. From a report: Miso Robotics in Pasadena has started rolling out its Flippy 2 robot, which automates the process of deep frying potatoes, onions and other foods. A big robotic arm like those in auto plants -- directed by cameras and artificial intelligence -- takes frozen French fries and other foods out of a freezer, dips them into hot oil, then deposits the ready-to-serve product into a tray.

Flippy 2 can cook several meals with different recipes simultaneously, reducing the need for catering staff and, says Miso, speed up order delivery at drive-through windows. "When an order comes in through the restaurant system, it automatically spits out the instructions to Flippy," Miso Chief Executive Mike Bell said in an interview. " ... It does it faster or more accurately, more reliably and happier than most humans do it," Bell added.
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Robots Are Making French Fries Faster, Better Than Humans More

Robots Are Making French Fries Faster, Better Than Humans

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  • ...have always been something of a dumpster fire.

    • That's why they taste good. Taste and nutritious value are inversely proportional most the time. I know some will loudly disagree and tell me about a wonderful dish they eat/make, but that's the exception (per person and/or dish). I stand by my statement; eat it!

      Further, diets mostly work because nutritious food's boring taste suppresses apatite compared to "the good stuff". It's almost nothing to do with calories but about kicking your taste-buds in the nuts to murder your apatite. For an extreme example,

    • Re:Human french fries... (Score:5, Informative)

      by theshowmecanuck ( 703852 ) on Wednesday October 05, 2022 @08:05PM (#62942563) Journal

      Fast food fries don't take much skill to cook. At the processing plants where McD's and others (same basic process for all of them) get their fries, they all go through and get cut in pretty much the same manner. They have sorters to get any back bits out (actually cool automation) that the may have been left after peeling and de-eyeing. The cut fries are sized, and the ones too small get sorted out and are used to make hashbrowns or instant mash potatoes. The fries that make it through are blanched in really large hot water cookers with a stainless steel conveyer taking them through. That blanches out excess starch. It is the starch content that determines how brown they get when cooked. If there is very little starch they can be fully cooked and crispy, but still pretty white looking. So there is a guy who takes a sample of fries coming out of the blancher regularly through the day, around the time different batches of potatoes brought in from different places are making it through. He takes the blanched fries and puts them in a deep fryer in a test shack inside the facility (these places are bigger than a couple of football fields and more, inside). He cooks them till done and then checks against a colour chart. Depending on the colour, they will know how much added sugar they need to spray on the blanched fries as they come out of the blancher, in order that when they are cooked at the fast food place they will always have the same level of crispy brownness. They make the adjustment in dextrose sprayers that coat the fries with, wait for it, a dextrose solution. Then they par deep fry them so they don't need to be cooked as long at the "restaurant," and then they go through bagging machines and then a freeze tunnel to freeze them solid in few minutes as they pass through.

      I used to work in chem eng in process r&d. I worked on a project seconded to a government food research centre building and running a pilot unit at a facility to see if we could use membrane separation to reclaim the blancher water using RO where the clean water gets reused, and the concentrated potatoe starch goes into industrial alcohol production. The place this was at went through a million pounds of potatoes per day and two million gallons of water. Mostly in the blanchers.

      Anyway, the bottom line is, there is no art or training needed to make fries at scrawny Ronnie's. Throw them in for the set time and temperature, and take them out. They will be cooked and the right brownness. A machine can do that.

  • Am I one of the few who things this is good? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ctilsie242 ( 4841247 ) on Wednesday October 05, 2022 @02:26PM (#62941433)

    Am I one of the few people who thinks a robot in the kitchen isn't all bad, especially for stuff that doesn't require a chef's finesse like cranking out fries? Fat frying equipment is relatively dangerous, and by having a robot handle it, that means one less thing that can do some nasty burns to whomever is working there.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      I, for one, welcome our new french-frying overlords!

      (Currently reading Bullsh*t Jobs by David Graeber. But it's important to note that not all shite jobs are BS jobs. Someone's gotta eat them french fries.)

      • Exactly. It's one of those jobs that are important to society - you're making something people love - and that's why it's badly paid.

        • He actually makes that point in the book, but I'm still trying to understand his explanation of why. So far I mostly agree with him except for the part about bankers making fake money by borrowing money. I think the fake value is mostly coming from imaginary stock prices these years. However, they often loan money against the fake share prices.

          • Yes, I read that book, too. It's not a scientific analysis, but lots of spot on observations. Those observations are especially interesting as many people deny the existence of BS job only on the premise that these can't exist in a market driven system. That makes it even more important to show where and that they exist.

    • Don't machines already make those ready-to-fry french fries you buy in the frozen foods section of the supermarket? This is but the finally step. BTW the dangers of frying is greatly reduced if you have a deep fryer, like the ones used in a typical fast food restaurant and hinted at in TFS ("deep frying potatoes").

      It should be fairly easy for somebody who's done some robotics work to jury-rig a French Frying robot. All you need is a consistent batch of frozen french fries, a timer or a thermometer, and of c

      • I think that you're missing that the oil in a deep fryer has a substantial amount of lingering heat. To the point that electrically turning off the heat isn't going to give you well cooked fries, because they'll be beyond burnt by the time the oil cools down. Not to mention totally soggy with oil.

        So you're looking at more of a robot fry lifter. Lowers the fries into the oil, then removes them when it is time. More automation would include loading/unloading the fry tray, maybe salting the removed product

        • That would be the robotics part. That thing about turning off the power is the (non-robotics) automation part, mainly for the green. Salting frozen french fries? That would be nuts. The frozen stuff is super salty and, incidentally, already well-oiled that you could just air-fry them.

    • It is a fantastic improvement to replace people by robots for many of the kitchen tasks that are done manually today. Some more thinking should be done to handle various exceptions, sensors need to be added to make sure the robot is aware of the environment, so if a piece of glass or anything that shouldn't be there falls into the food/oil the robot is aware and can stop serving food that may not be safe, things like that. Other than that it is a very much welcome improvement.

    • we're putting hundreds of thousands out of work with a major push into Automation. Basically a second Industrial Revolution. The rate of Job Destruction is far outstripping the rate of creation. [businessinsider.com]

      We're still very much a "if you don't work you don't eat" society. And we're rapidly running out of work. This is different from horse whips. There was new work to do back then over at the auto plant. What we're doing here is completely replacing the jobs at both the buggy whip plant and the auto plant.

      Yes, w

      • Re: It's only good if we adjust for it (Score:4, Interesting)

        by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Wednesday October 05, 2022 @03:22PM (#62941661)

        Rapidly running out of work? Fuck off. There is a labor shortage. If you have any STEM skills, there are a ton of openings. Work needs to be automated. We need to provide a universal basic income, rather than reduce the number of goods produced. We need to do whatever it takes to increase the supply of goods. Tax the factories, so that unemployed can get income. But robots are the thing that will make everything cheaper. A refrigerator would not be available go 99 percent of people if industrial robots were not involved in making them. Sure you would have jobs, but what use is a job if you cannot buy anything with it because the supply is limited?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by drnb ( 2434720 )

        we're putting hundreds of thousands out of work with a major push into Automation.

        Also due to politicians turning a fast food job from a low wage temporary entry-level job into a permanent job that should offer a living wage. This opened the door to today's automation.

        I'd say its a typical good intentions meets unintended consequences sort of thing but they were warned about precisely this.

        Enjoy the self serve order/pay kiosk next. We actually had a fast food restaurant locally that was apparently an experimental location. They removed a couple of traditional employee order entry/r

        • The increase in minimum wage by a few bucks an hour probably sped up the automation trend in restaurants by a maximum of about 5 years. It would be happening anyway. Just a question of when the declining cost of effective automated equipment meets the slightly rising cost of labor. Those lines are going to cross sooner or later anyway, and not that much out into the future.

          You should concentrate on the fundamentals of the situation and trends, and not try to make a petty political point that turns out to no

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by drnb ( 2434720 )

            The increase in minimum wage by a few bucks an hour ...

            With a target of $15, that's a 25% increase in wages for a $12 starting point. The actual starting point is more typically around $10, so we are really talking about a 30% increase in most areas. But good effort on your part for attempting to camouflage that. And you lecture others about being political, LOL.

            ... probably sped up the automation trend in restaurants by a maximum of about 5 years. It would be happening anyway. Just a question of when the declining cost of effective automated equipment meets the slightly rising cost of labor.

            No, not 5 years. We are not talking about some purely digital product here. There is a lot of analog and mechanic here. The increasing capability of a small single board computer is not really a large

          • I doubt it. You've never worked fast food have you? Or if you have it was a long long time ago. Fast food restaurants are constantly struggling with unreliable employees because when you pay someone that little it's impossible for them to have enough stability to be a useful worker. The only way humans could compete with machines there as if you could own them slaves. And outside of prison labor in the south you can't do that in America

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        I'm sure all the candlemakers, buggy whip manufacturers, and serfs who work the field are all rooting for those lost jobs.

        The industrial revolution cost a lot of people their jobs. Working the farms no longer was something you had to do - after all, pre-industrial revolution, about 80% of the population worked the fields. These days, about 3-5% does.

        Likewise, factory jobs - like what the majority of people in Foxconn do in China, are gone in the US. Not that anyone misses them - if you think putting tab A i

    • How long until the robots start killing the cleaning crew? Who is next after the cleaning crew?

      • How long until the robots start killing the cleaning crew? Who is next after the cleaning crew?

        Does it matter? We should absolutely get society to a point where pointless labour busywork is no longer required, and as we do it society will adapt and people will find other work to do. People don't have an inherent destiny to be cleaners (or anything for that matter).

        • Yes, it matters.

          We are talking about a fry cook robot here. The robot does not fill or change the fry oil. The robot does not stock the items it fries. Humans are needed to help the robots be able to do their job properly. Humans are needed to service the robots. Safety still matters for humans.

          Consider these links:
          https://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/... [osha.gov]"Robot"&keyword_list=on

          https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]

          • Well, slashdot f'd up the link. You'll have to do the robot search yourself or put the URL back together yourself.

        • You do understand that the automation will be advancing in many ways (physical, perception, cognitive) to be better at various kinds of work than an increasingly large percentage of the population, right?

          Thinking that it is only pointless busywork that will be automated is naïve.

          The question will become, what DO people have an inherent destiny to become, and why is that important?

          AI is becoming half-decent at abstract art already for example, to the point where it won at least one competition.

          Perha

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      I never unstops why we still have so many humans working in fast food places. It has to be that humans are cheaper or safety concerns with high speed machinery. As soon as a robot goes in, you may be required to hire adults.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by drnb ( 2434720 )

        I never unstops why we still have so many humans working in fast food places.

        Those new to the job market need a place to start. Fast food was a pretty common entry point in the past. Unskilled labor could be fairly quickly trained.

        For a few generations you could blindly ask a person "Which fast food place was your first job at?" and many people would laugh at the good guess and tell you some like "six months at XYZ". Often while in high school. When you graduated high school you had a better chance at getting a decent job outside of fast food. HS Diploma alone tends to lose to HS

    • Am I one of the few people who thinks a robot in the kitchen isn't all bad, especially for stuff that doesn't require a chef's finesse like cranking out fries?

      Given the name of the robot, "Flippy", I'd expect fries are just the start. Grilled items like burgers and hotdogs are next?

    • From the pictures, I don't know how long it will be before that casing around the arm needs washing. How long before someone forgets to turn it off when they give it the nightly clean and becomes a flesh fritter.

      Paranoid, maybe. People have been caught in less complex machines.

      I've got burns on my hands from oil when working with purely manual kitchen stuff, I was 16 at the time and working for minimum wage, I would not be surprised to learn of teenagers getting worse from mishaps around this. Though with a

      • In the US, OSHA regulations which reference RIA 15.06 [ansi.org] would apply. This standard addresses the sort of hazards you mention. Similar to a CNC machine, my guess is that the robot work cell has interlocked guards so that the arm is deenergized anytime the door is open. I think that's what the hinged plexiglass door in the 2nd image is.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by vux984 ( 928602 )

      It's not all bad. But there are downsides. Training someone on making fries takes 10 minutes, and its one of the first things a new hire gets trained on, so everyone in the place can make fries.

      The fryer is pretty bullet proof-- if the oil is at the right level, the temperature is set correctly, you don't over fill the basket with fries, and you take them out, and salt them when the timer beeps the fries are good.

      Absolutely a robot can replace the human here.

      But the trouble with robot systems is that if the

    • Hell yeah... in high school I had to fry taco shells at Taco Bell for 8 hour shifts. What a miserable job, and the stench when you come home...

      I am surprised though that Flippy can do a better job than the integrated machines. I get that flexibility is better, but it seems odd to retrofit the human process.

  • How does it do it "happier" than humans? Some people enjoy menial labor.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jeremi ( 14640 )

      Some people enjoy menial labor.

      Some people enjoy being kicked in the nuts, too. However, they're the exception, not the rule.

    • The "happier" part was thrown in there as a sales pitch to the management at these places. They have identified rude employees as the source of customer complaints, and they feel that "happy" employees won't be rude. Their fixation on this is why they recruit with phrases like "Now hiring smiling faces", make you take a 30+ minute personality test to apply, etc.

      They measure "employee happiness" by the number of customer complaints. Is it any surprise that they don't understand it?

  • This is gonna go great until rodents jump in (Score:5, Interesting)

    by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Wednesday October 05, 2022 @02:35PM (#62941465) Homepage Journal

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    The above video is of a whataburger in Texas that had a mouse jump in the deep fryer. I don't know that Flippy can detect rodents, but I'll wager it doesn't. The SOP in this situation is to turn off the fryer, drain the oil, bleach and sterilize the fryer, fill it back up with oil. When this happens, humans usually catch it immediately.

    What happens when flippy just merrily goes about his business and serves out a lunch rush where a rat had been floating outside of the fry basket all afternoon? Is the restaurant going to take the hit? Miso? Ultimately who is responsible when Flippy fucks up?

    Not so appealing now is it? I think I'll stick to human made fries, unless they hermetically seal the fry station.

    • Re:This is gonna go great until rodents jump in (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheMeuge ( 645043 ) on Wednesday October 05, 2022 @02:49PM (#62941519)

      I actually agree with you that a simple robot will not detectect contamination, and that people should be involved.

      However, I am trying to leverage my extensive background in biology to figure out the reasoning behind your SOP of bleaching and "sterilizing" the fryer after a mouse jumps in.

      I mean you can say you're going to drain and clean if because it's gross... But if your deep fryer oil is not sterile at 375F, I'm not sure what new kingdom of organisms you've invented.

      Is this the new "follow the science" kind of SOP?

    • the butt head working the counter will just say cool

    • While it's "gross" to think about, a rodent in a deep fry isn't going to do much to the food. At those temperatures the fluids are going to flash boil and the carcass will shrivel and sink as it cooks while the liquid inside is replaced by the oil. If you're served fries from there because Clippy's cousin Flippy doesn't go all "I've noticed a rat crawled into the fryer, would you like help cleaning it out?" you're likely going to be just fine - the extreme heat will sterilize the rat and you might even li

    • you need to wait for it to this bad before any thing is done
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • Re:This is gonna go great until rodents jump in (Score:5, Interesting)

      by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Wednesday October 05, 2022 @03:21PM (#62941657) Homepage
      I hate to burst your bubble, but almost every packaged food you buy at the grocery store was made by robots or other automated machines with very little human intervention. Do you think anyone would catch it if a mouse jumped into the chicken nugget making machine, or the hotdog making machine? For lots of fun, check out hatchery automation [youtube.com]. Or ketchup [youtube.com]. Or cereal [youtube.com]. Do you think they hermetically seal the whole factory? I've been in the cereal factory and I've seen the birds flying around up in the rafters. Stuff happens [www.cbc.ca]. It's even explicitly allowed [livescience.com].
    • The temperature will kill any pathogens, so unless you actually serve the deep fried mouse to a customer, nobody will ever know.

    • It has a camera, so it's trivial to solve once they know it's a possibility. They can easily detect foreign or unidentified objects falling in and halt/flag it until someone inspects the video/fryer.

    • I don't know that Flippy can detect rodents, but I'll wager it doesn't.

      Have you looked at the capabilities of modern single board computers, even modern microcontrollers? We are basically at the point where commodity level hardware has the ability to look for such contamination.

      Plus the installation of the robot can enclose the deep fryer to a degree.

    • What happens when flippy just merrily goes about his business and serves out a lunch rush where a rat had been floating outside of the fry basket all afternoon?

      What makes you think someone making poverty wages will give a fuck in the same one in a billion scenario? In that video the people caused it to jump into the fryer.

    • Is the restaurant going to take the hit? Miso? Ultimately who is responsible when Flippy fucks up?

      Miso sorry. - JJB

    • Re:This is gonna go great until rodents jump in (Score:5, Informative)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday October 05, 2022 @05:46PM (#62942233)

      When this happens, humans usually catch it immediately.

      You're assuming humans give a damn. I did quite a lot of "food" based jobs during university. Three great examples stand out:
      - At a Dominos I worked at we had a power outage. To make sure the dough got proofed and we could serve pizzas in the evening, dumbfuck manager A decided to put the pizzas out on the ground behind the store. There were birds and all sorts of shit there. There was visible dirt in the dough. It was served to customers that evening.
      - At a Pizza Hut the Bolognese machine was never really properly cleaned. Dumbfuck manager B decided one day to pour industrial floor cleaner in it to loosen the grime. Among the things which floated to the surface were some 8 dead cockroaches. One employee even threw up when he saw it (he loved - past tense - Bolognese source on pizza). We'd been serving people food from that machine for months in that state.
      - At a biscuit factory I was walking past the dough preparation section prior to the ovens and saw a big arse moth fly into one of the rollers. I looked at the supervisor and he said "It's a quality control problem" and we watched the moth go in the oven. 15min later I was delivering clean tins down to picking and found the quality control person dozing off. The picking was automated on this line so if he didn't see it, it most certainly ended up shipped to a customer.

      Never overestimate how much minimum wage employees give a shit. You know in all my time working in the food industry I not once read the SOPs. I knew of them, but I never knew anyone who had read them. I'll happily put a wager down that the fryer in the video was not bleached and sterilized, I'll wager it was drained and given the most minimal level of care someone who didn't want to be at work that day could muster.

      Humans are the worst.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ghoul ( 157158 )
      Rodents can only come in if there are doors for humans. If its a robot in its workspace with access to a fridge, a fryer and a chute to deposit the fries in where does the rodent come in from.

  • Could have had this headline instead:

    Harder Better Faster Saltier

  • Of course (Score:3)

    by big-giant-head ( 148077 ) on Wednesday October 05, 2022 @02:50PM (#62941523)

    Robots are good at repetitive tasks. Check the oil temp. At the right temp drop the fries for eight x seconds. Remove fries, drain, equally apply y amount of salt. Put fries in bin. Repeat. Humans get distracted.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by pz ( 113803 )

      If you want a machine to make the french fries, why design one that operates a station made for humans? There should be no robot involved, just a honking machine that takes frozen sliced potatoes in one end and produces perfect fries out the other.

      Burger King has been doing exactly this for their meat patties for a long time.

  • I wonder (Score:4, Funny)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Wednesday October 05, 2022 @02:53PM (#62941539)

    Do the PR departments for these venture capitalists use the same story submission form we do, or do they have a better one that fast tracks their press releases straight to the front page?

    • Sounds like the perfect job for a robot

    • Especially since isn't what is really new here is the robot plucks the fries from the freezer. I thought all fast food places already are setup so the human dumps fries from the freezer into the basket and pushes a the "fries" button. The machine lowers the basket for a preset time for "fries" and automatically raises it after the correct time. Then the human has to dump the fries and salt them. The robot I assume has taken over that task here as well. So not much new. And according to the article, they hav

  • The Fries of the Killer Machines

  • Can it also clean afterwards to Gus Fring's satisfaction?

  • get the burned fries in the bottom of the box?

  • ...and human jobs aren't in that much danger.

    Restaurants are going to have to hire someone specifically to clean the robot's protective coverings, not to mention clean up the very impressive amount of splashed oil and spilled product it flings all over everything.

    And I'm sure that the owner/inventor is quite correct?

    Yes, it does free up the rest of the kitchen workers to do other tasks. But not having the finesse and physical dexterity of a human means kitchen workers are going to have just as much work to

  • Timely given the recent wage change in CA (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Whateverthisis ( 7004192 ) on Wednesday October 05, 2022 @03:16PM (#62941641)
    Notably this is a company in CA, building a robot to replace specifically fast food workers.

    That is well timed given that CA just passed a law [shrm.org] requiring fast food workers (and only fast food workers, not any other minimum wage job) to be paid 50% more than the current minimum wage.

    I hope the SEIU regrets endorsing this bill since it'll just drive fast food franchise owners to capital vs. labor.

  • I thought Flippy was deraugatory towards Filipino people. They might want to rename it something else before Twitter finds out!

  • "I'm not locked in here with you, you're locked in here with ME!"

    • "I'm not locked in here with you, you're locked in here with ME!"

      From The Good Place [wikipedia.org], What's My Motivation [fandom.com] (s1e11):

      Michael: I'm going to leave you here, in this locked room.
      Jason: I'm in jail?
      Michael: No, no, no... This is the Good Place, we don't put people in jail. It's just a room, where you have been put, in the interest of public safety, as a form of punishment, and from which there is no exit. Okay? Bye.

      Which is the concept and exact title of Jean-Paul Sartre play, No Exit [wikipedia.org] (apparently, one of the show’s biggest inspirations), with its most famous line: “Hell is other people.”

  • Robots Are Making French Fries Faster ...

    I'm guessing they mean with respect to the mechanics, not the actual frying as that would require changing physics / thermo-dynamics.

  • How much do they cost? Divide that by $7 min wage then do it for $15 min wage. Plus taxes fico etc. See how fast these machines pay for themselves, quality of the fries is way down on the list of considerations. If it can flip a burger or mop the floor, now you are really talking.
  • Dump frozen fries into basket, lower basket, raise basket, shake, lower basket, raise basket, tilt, dump fries into heated area, salt. That's all humans do. Doesn't seem massively complicated to automate.

  • We have been cooking french fries at an industrial scale since the 1960's, it requires a conveyer mesh(that's higher on both ends than the middle) , a vat of oil and a slight current of said oil so the fries move from one end to the other in a timed fashion. Once at the end the conveyer comes back up and drains

    SURELY for the fucking love of god we can shrink that without involving AI VR AR robotic arms and the god damned cloud, its a problem already solved

  • Call it a good thing to roboticize a dirty job that nobody likes, but find better jobs for the surplus fry cooks. That's the true test of employment innovation: Does the redundant worker now live a better life, or have they simply been excluded from income?

  • Robots have the patience to fry them longer, leading to a truly crispy outside. Humans are idiots and pull out oily, soggy fries before their time.

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