On Tuesday my group and I went to the restaurant ‘’Din Tai Fung’’ to observe the robots, and how they engage with customers alongside waiters. We realized one robot took over the task to take dishes and the other one to serve food. We observed the robots and heard they were able to speak a few words and talk to people in English. If the robot moves around and people are in the way or in front of it, it tells people to move with the installed voice. The white robot is there to bring in the food from the kitchen and the black one takes the dirty dishes. The white robot is installed to move from the kitchen to the middle of the restaurant, where the waitresses take out the dishes and bring them to the correct table. Overall, it just moves in a straight line back and forth and is programmed to always stop at the same spot. On its way back and forth, it senses when people are around or in the way and acknowledges this way of navigating (meaning it won’t hurt or bump into anyone). Generally, we all agreed it only saves waiters time to go to the kitchen and the way into the kitchen for waiters, but the food is still being served by real humans. The robot does not directly come to people’s tables.
Therefore, it also only engages and helps the waiters, but not the customers at the restaurant. These machines are made in China and the Chinese peers in the group shared that those robots are being used a lot in restaurants in their country. We as a group also wanted to take privacy into consideration and questioned the waiter if the robots also have cameras, which he answered ‘’no’’ to. This could actually mean that people could feel more private in the future world during their restaurant visits. For the most part, we all agreed that the staff did not seem to engage with the robots as much and that the white robot version was also more active. How helpful it is at this point also seemed questionable. In the future, this could maybe develop into installing robots to go to the actual tables so customers can just take the food out themselves. The order could potentially be taken via a QR code and could connect the order made via the code to the robot and the right table. This invention certainly gave us a glimpse into how our future world and work environment for some could appear, but for now, collaboration between humans and robots is still necessary. A world in which the robot is working individually and on its own still seems far away. Taking this observation into consideration for our project idea ”AI and robot work agencies” I could imagine a world in which restaurants could hire a robot to try them out and consider them for their business if they feel unsure about it. In this way, this invention could get tested by many without committing to an instant purchase.