H LV <[email protected]> wrote: Btw, a so called "burger flipper" isn't hired just to flip burgers. Even > if you had an unlimited budget with current technology you could not build > a robot to perform all the tasks a "burger flipper" does at a restaurant. >
That is true. Engineers are still replacing one job at a time with robots of limited capacity. These robots resemble non-robotic restaurant machinery such as dish washing machines or rotisserie cookers. They are single-function machines. The same is true of the robots used to move shelves in the Amazon.com warehouses. All they do is move shelves, bringing goods to people who then pick the goods from the shelf and put them in boxes. However, I expect Amazon will soon have robots that pick the goods from the shelf and put them in boxes, eliminating people from this step. Amazon sponsors an engineering competition to develop that capability. The Amazon warehouse has a limited set of procedures, so I suppose a dozen different single-purpose robot types could probably do nearly every job. There is no need for a multipurpose humanoid robot capable of two or more jobs. In a kitchen or fast food restaurant, there are probably more different types of jobs than in the Amazon warehouse. I suppose that cracking and mixing eggs calls for different kind of robot tools and different software than, say, assembling a hamburger sandwich or scooping french fries. So, to fully automate a fast food restaurant with a small number of robot types, you would need general purpose robots with considerably more computer power and stronger artificial intelligence than today's best machines. I think such robots will inevitably be developed. In 10 or 20 years they will be cheap and widely available. - Jed
