Automatic Hamburger Machine - 50 Years Ahead of Its Time!

What people said

Cites Animats · 2015-08 · Hacker News · on “Startups That Launched at YC S15 Demo Day 1”

Circle Medical is "Uber for doctors". That's going to be interesting. The tea-making robot seems to come with overoptimistic numbers. The sandwich-making robot is a good idea, but it will need a complete redesign to make it cleanable. All stainless and Teflon, no food trap points, machine-washable, steam-cleanable. Whether it's cost effective is another issue. That idea has been tried many times. Here's AMFare, from American Machine and Foundry, in 1964.[1] That system worked quite well, but needed a constantly busy fast food outlet to justify the expense. Then there's the version for the 1%[2]. [1] [this video] [2] [LINK]

Cites Animats · 2016-04 · Hacker News · on “Will minimum wage hikes lead to a huge boost in automation? Only if we're lucky”

Robotic fast food restaurants have been built. Check out AMFare, from American Machine and Foundry, deployed in 1964.[1][2] Automatically produced a range of meals (burgers, hot dogs, chicken, fries, shakes) comparable to most of McDonalds' business. This worked, and served real customers for a year, but was never deployed beyond one test location. Apparently it wasn't cost-effective. AMF returned to their more successful product, automated bowling alleys, which they still make and operate. There's a startup trying to do a burger machine now.[3] Typical pretty web site, no installations. Last updated in 2014. McDonalds deployed a robotic kitchen in Phoenix AZ last year, and it hasn't been he

Cites contingencies · 2016-08 · Hacker News · on “The History of Push-Button Cuisine”

Should be titled Aerosol Cuisine . There were many 'modern' achievements in food tech in the 1950s. Check out this automated hamburger restaurant [this video] ... which is uncomfortably close to (and far ahead of) [LINK] (7 years in?). Last month I founded Infinite Food , an automated food preparation and retail service startup (based on actual fresh ingredients and just in time preparation) here in mainland China... currently we have a minimum functional prototype, a mechanical demonstration, a strong business plan and financial projection and are seeking additional seed, see [LINK]

Cites Animats · 2016-09 · Hacker News · on “Fully Autonomous Robots: The Warehouse Workers of the Near Future”

So far, nobody has done a successful automated restaurant. There have been many attempts. The first was AMFare, built in 1964 by American Machine and Foundry, and it was better than most of its successors.[1] McDonalds tried and failed about a decade ago. Eatsa, the SF chain, is just an automat where you can't see the kitchen. Momentum Machines in SF has a prototype hamburger-customization machine, but hasn't shipped. There's a functioning pizza-making robot from Zume. So far, though, the hardware has a narrow functional range. There's lots of automated food preparation in the plants that make frozen dinners and airline meals. But those,too, have a narrow product range. A good place to start

Cites jayjay71 · 2016-12 · Hacker News · on “Eatsa: Quinoa-based fast food”

Eatsa has done a great job marketing itself as the automatic restaurant, so much so that many people believe robots prepare their food (their kitchen is just as labor intensive as any other restaurant). I actually spoke to their engineering director a while ago and I think they are going to have a hard time building any real robots (they are working on this and hired several engineers to do so). For starters, they had to outsource building their automatic cubbies - they couldn't build a moving door by themselves. But they are hoping to build an autonomous food preparation system more sophisticated and an order of magnitude cheaper than anything that exists today. Something I see a lot is for

Cites rightbyte · 2018-06 · Hacker News · on “Burger Robot Startup Opens First Restaurant”

Well this was done in the 60s allready. [this video] It was most likely cracy expensive just as these news machines are compared to a ordinary restaurant grade kitchen and you still need people going around unstucking things that get stuck. Bringing industrial processes into street food seems ... unpractical.

Cites rightbyte · 2019-03 · Hacker News · on “Why Is It So Hard to Build Profitable Robot Companies?”

You mean a snow blower crossed with a automatic lawn mower? Sounds like a quite simple and fun student project, but the hard part is probably making it safe enough for an actual product. As a side note, here's a automatic hamburger restaurant from the 50s. [this video]

Cites contingencies · 2020-07 · Hacker News · on “New revamped version of the AnyMeal recipe management software”

Absolutely not, for IP protection reasons. 4 years of R&D. Our strategy for commercialization is wholly owned network operation. Quite unlike the apparent de-facto strategy within the segment of "wow-factor novelty" we have designed for operation as an always-available urban utility. Examples of "wow-factor novelty robots": Foodom in Guangzhou, Ekim/Pazzi in France, Creator in SF, Spyce in Boston, etc. It seems the done thing, when that fails to commercialize, is that you spend marketing budget on expensive chefs to convince people the food is good, then you go back to your investors for more money, then you become a zombie startup... (Edit: Oh there are many more projects... it is quite an

Cites rightbyte · 2021-05 · Hacker News · on “A.I. Is Solving the Wrong Problem”

That project has way to little coverage. It is like the 70s automatic hamburger joint. [this video] I recall some Ford(?) project which guided the cars by rail that was quite old.

Cites Animats · 2021-08 · Hacker News · on “Where are the robotic bricklayers?”

We absolutely can automate cooking a fucking hamburger, and as soon as it's cheaper than the cheapest labour It's time to link to the AMFare video again.[1] This was done 50 years ago, but wasn't cost-effective. Country Garden in Beijing has several automated restaurants. They have 6 restaurants on this system now, one of which seats 600 people. So at scale, this is starting to work. Maybe. Looking at the videos, it looks hard to clean. Commercial food processing equipment has a look of "can be blasted with boiling soapy water daily", and not seeing that here.[2] [1] [this video] [2] [LINK]