RESTAURANT INTRODUCES FLIPPY, THE ROBOT BURGER FLIPPER

CaliBurger, a California fast-food chain, has installed its first Flippy, a robotic kitchen assistant that can cook hamburgers. Cameras and sensors help Flippy to determine when the burgers are fully cooked, before the robot places them on a bun. A human worker then takes over and adds condiments. Flippy’s makers say it can be installed in just five minutes. What’s more, it gets smarter. David Zito, chief executive officer of Miso Robotics, says that much like self-driving vehicles, the Flippy system continuously learns from its experiences to improve over time. He says that although they’re starting with cooking burgers, their kitchen assistants are adaptable and can be trained to help with almost any dull, dirty or dangerous task in a commercial kitchen – like frying chicken, chopping vegetables or final plating. More Flippy robots will be introduced at CaliBurgers next year, with the aim of installing them in 50 of their restaurants worldwide by the end of 2019. CaliBurger say the benefits include making “food faster, safer and with fewer errors”.
* And fewer annoying employee salaries.
* Laid-off fast food workers are now flipping Flippy the bird.
* Calling a job-stealing robot Flippy is a bit flippant.
* But have they thought about making one to clean the grease trap, or hose down the bathrooms? No.
* It can get smarter? How much smarter, on a scale of one to Skynet?
* This may finally allow Mr. Crabs to fire SpongeBob from the Krusty Krab.
* Chopping vegetables? I would be very nervous around a robot named Choppy.
* I don’t like the implication when they say, “It can get smarter.” “Yeah, especially compared to this dumb-ass human standing there.”
* Great, something else for the CIA to hack.
* Just another part of our American Heritage ripped to shreds.
* If we can’t flip our own burgers, we really are losing it.
(Flippy video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEfNsyBL6LI)