A Robot Might Cook Your Next White Castle Burger

From Popular Mechanics

• Earlier this month, the fast food chain White Castle announced it would begin using an autonomous fry cook robot, called Flippy, to reduce human contact in its restaurants.

• The move is meant to reduce human contact with food amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Flippy will start flipping patties at a White Castle in Chicago sometime this fall.

Robots and self-driving cars have been the secret heroes of the coronavirus outbreak, and now they could soon be cooking our food, too.

In mid-July, White Castle—the oldest hamburger restaurant in the U.S.—announced that it’s partnering with Miso Robotics, a Pasadena, California-based industrial automation company, to create a robot that will serve up hamburgers. Named Flippy, this robot will begin preparing patties and dunking fries into hot vats of oil sometime this fall.

Despite this being Flippy’s first official fast food rodeo, the autonomous robot already has a built-in fanbase. The robot has worked in Dodger Stadium to provide Miso with prelimary deployment data.

Some detractors have pointed out that a robot fry cook is basically a worst-case scenario for the humans currently doing that work, but White Castle maintains that the pilot with Flippy is not just about enhanced production speeds. Flippy is meant as an added layer of health and safety in the cooking process to protect workers and customers from the spread of harmful food-borne illnesses, as well as COVID-19.

“Like many sectors, the restaurant industry has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and has been forced to reexamine business operations and best practices,” the company stated in a press release. “White Castle’s decision to pilot Flippy in the kitchen creates an avenue for reduced human contact with food during the cooking process—reducing potential for transmission of food pathogens.”

According to a product page on the Miso Robotics website, Flippy can learn from its surroundings to help acquire new skills over time, and can seamlessly switch between flipping burgers (or any other food in question) and cleaning up the cooktop. It can work continuously for 100,000 hours and is compliant with standards set by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

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Flippy isn’t the only robot moving into the restaurant industry. Sony and Carnegie Mellon University have joined forces to build robots with the dexterity and precision required to handle food prep, cooking, and delivery. Boston University researchers have built a pair of robots that can cook and assemble hot dogs, including toppings. And in Mountain View, California, a robot named Vincenzo works for Zume Pizza, removing the piping hot food from the ovens to help reduce human injuries.

White Castle’s vice president of shareholder relations, Jamie Richardson, told TechCrunch that Miso Robotics is currently installing Flippy at a undisclosed location in the Chicago area. The robot will be integrated with White Castle’s point-of-sale system so that it can immediately begin cooking as soon as a cashier places the order.

That first Flippy robot will come online in September.

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