Amy, Ella, Will and Josh work in a restaurant as waiters. They bring food to the tables, socialize with guests, and every now and then, they’ll roll into the corner to recharge their batteries.
All four of these employees are robots, and they are the main attraction at Robotazia, a restaurant in Milton Keynes, UK.
Even so, the store’s owners, Joy Gittens and Mark Swannell, have said they will never replace all of their human employees with machines, because the robots have some notable drawbacks. idea.
They run away from guests wearing a lot of jewelry
Amy
Robotic workers often turn around and roll away from guests wearing lots of metal jewelry. This has to do with signals being reflected from jewelry metals.
“They’ll come to the table to deliver the food, but don’t let people take the food out of the tray and turn away.” Gittens said.
So Gittens and Swannell say they will first have to check if customers are wearing a lot of jewelry so that they “get the best experience” with its special staff.
They talk too much
Amy has an interactive function that allows the robot to answer customer questions.
“We turned that feature off because it would never finish shipping, because it had to be there to chat.” Gittens said.
The robot, made in Japan, also speaks “an odd and not entirely logical English”, according to Swannell.
Amy, speaks with a typical robotic American accent, and now won’t ask any questions or answer anything. Instead, the robot girl just said “bon appetit” (an English word borrowed from the French for “Have a good appetite”) before returning to her place.
They give up work when “hungry”
Ella
When robots need to recharge, they leave very quickly.
“If they sense that the power level is going to be low, they will tell you that it needs to be recharged.”, Gittens said. “And no matter what they’re doing, they’ll leave to return to the charging point.”
And Amy did it on one of the restaurant’s busiest Saturdays, Gittens said. She had to go to the table to tell the customer that “at least she [Amy] know when I need to recharge.”
The robots are also capable of expressing certain emotions. For example, if a customer gets too close, a tear will appear on his face [màn hình] of robots.
They cannot perform some basic tasks
Robots can deliver food on trays, but they cannot clear the table. They also cannot check if a person is old enough to buy alcohol.
Furthermore, they cannot clean themselves or change batteries. Gittens and Swannell had to hire four people, one for each robot, to keep them running.
Swannell says that robotic staff is more expensive than human staff. This is partly due to maintenance. Swannell says he fixes or modifies parts on the robot every Tuesday.
Josh and Amy.
They are not human
Swannell and Gittens say they value their employees more who they are. Robotazia’s website says “people are at the core of our business and the hospitality industry.”
“Human involvement is still a wonderful thing. It’s really warm to have someone say; ‘How are you? Thank you for coming to Robotazia.’“, Gittens shared.
Refer BI
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