The use of robots to replace employees is applied by some stores, but they are difficult to complete the task because they are busy gossiping or suddenly run out of batteries.
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| Robots serving at Robotazia restaurant. Photo: Robotazia |
Amy, Ella, Will and Josh work in a restaurant as waiters, delivering food to tables, chatting with guests, and occasionally moving to a place to recharge. These are robots working at Robotazia, a restaurant in Milton Keynes (UK).
According to Joy Gittens and Mark Swannell, two Robotazia restaurant owners, the robots are basically pretty convenient. However, they are not yet capable of completely replacing humans because there are still many disadvantages that are difficult to overcome.
Gittens said the restaurant's robots never move, even "run away" if a customer wears too much metal jewelry. This problem is related to the signal reflected with the metal of the robot when operating automatically.
"They will bring the food to the customer's table, but don't let them get it in time and leave immediately," Gittens said. "We often have to watch for guests to bring a lot of jewelry and advise to remove it for the best experience with the robot. In the event of a refusal, the normal staff will serve them."
Among the robots, Amy has the ability to interact, briefly answering guests' questions. "However, we had to turn off this feature, because the robot would neglect a lot of other things because it was busy chatting with customers," Gittens said.
In addition, according to Swannell, the entire robot is made in Japan. The part of the programming language that he describes as "odd English that doesn't quite make sense".
Both consider their group of service robots "undisciplined" when ready to stop what they are doing at any time if the battery is low and return to the charging station without giving notice. "As long as the battery is low, no matter what they are doing, they will return to the charging station," Gittens shared. "This may be normal with robots, but very inappropriate for restaurants, especially when crowded."
In addition, the robot "staff" also has many other disadvantages, such as not being able to clear the table, not detecting problem food, not checking if the person buying alcohol is old enough or not. They are also not self-cleaning and maintenance-free. Swannell said it had to hire four employees for maintenance every Tuesday.
With the above disadvantages, the two Robotazia restaurant owners believe that the use of service robots is only for demonstration purposes and cannot replace humans. "Human involvement still feels great," says Gittens. "Customers will feel warmer if an employee talks to them and says: Thank you for coming to our restaurant."
Via Business Insider
