Robowaiter: Chinese robot restaurant opens

Restaurants are increasingly resorting to gimmicks to set them apart from the crowd as diners become more educated and demanding. A Chinese restaurateur has taken this concept up a notch, opening a restaurant in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, which is staffed almost entirely by robots.

As diners walk through the door, they are greeted by an usher robot that says, “Earth Person, Hello. Welcome to the Robot Restaurant,” before showing guests to their table. Real human waiters take orders for food, which is then prepared by robot chefs, including dumpling robots, noodle robots and cooking robots. Once the meals are ready, robot waiters deliver the food to diners’ tables, following a set of tracks through the restaurant. As diners enjoy their robot-cooked and -delivered food, a singing robot provides entertainment.

The robots, which have a battery life of about five hours, are all equipped with sensors that allow them to move freely through the restaurant without running into patrons.

The robots were designed and created by the Harbin Haohai Robot Company and cost 200,000 to 300,000 yuan ($31,000 to $47,000) each.

A Beijing restaurateur has designed a robot chef that makes sliced noodles after struggling to find human noodle chefs due to increased job opportunities for younger Chinese generations. The robots sell for around 13,000 yuan ($2000) - a price that many noodle restaurant owners say is a bargain when compared with paying a human noodle chef.

US-based Momentum Machines has created a hamburger robot, which it says can generate savings that allow a restaurant to spend approximately twice as much on high-quality ingredients. Its robots can produce up to 360 hamburgers per hour, slicing toppings and grinding meats to order.