US Restaurants and Hotels Turn to Robotics To Alleviate Staff Shortages

The labour shortage of restaurants and hotels in the US is becoming more serious as many establishments reopened this summer. Some business owners have turned to robots, which can make French fries, mix drinks, serve the food and even clean toilets. Bear Robotics, an ex-Googler start-up based in California and backed by Softbank, is a robotics and artificial intelligence company with expertise in the hospitality industry. Its flag product Servi has been widely tested and adopted in the industry across the US, from Florida’s Sergio’s to Country Biscuit in North California to Sangam Chettinad Indian Cuisine Restaurant in Austin. Servi uses cameras and laser sensors to carry plates of food from the kitchen to tables in the dining room, where the waiter then transfers the plates to the customer’s table. The robot costs $999 a month, including installation and support. The demand for Servi isn’t an isolated case - many hospitality robotics companies, like Miso Robotics, Peanut Robotics, Knightscope, SoftBank Robotics and Makr Shakr, say they have seen huge spikes in inquiries for their robots since the pandemic hit. Miso Robotics product Flippy is getting 150 enquiries per week according to the company. Flippy uses AI, sensors, computer vision and robotic arms to fry fast food, like French fries and chicken wings. At the cost of $3,000 per month including maintenance, Flippy can identify the food, sense the oil temperature, and monitor the cooking time.

First Four Partially 3D Printed Homes Go on Sale in the US

A quartet of houses designed by Logan Architecture and partially built from 3D-printed concrete by construction tech company ICON have been completed in Austin, Texas. The East 17th Street Residences in East Austin are now on the market, which construction company ICON and developer 3strands claim makes them the first 3D Printed houses to go on sale in the US. The four houses have ground floor walls built using ICON's Vulcan construction system, which uses a robotic armature to layer Portland-cement-based material Lavacrete into striated surfaces. CON claims that this process creates a stronger and longer-lasting building material compared to traditional techniques, and makes the homes tougher in the face of extreme weather. The 3D-printed elements for the development, which comprises two two-bedroom homes and two four-bedroom homes, were completed in March 2021. It took five to seven days to print each house. With these 4 homes built construction company IKON plans to dramatically scale the usage of the technology up next year with plans to build 100 partially 3D printed homes in Texas on what will be the worlds biggest community of 3D printed homes. This technology would significantly reduce labor costs, construction time, use of materials and carbon footprint.

UK’s Largest Retailer Tesco Launches Cashier-less Store with Trigo Vision

UK grocery giant Tesco has opened a frictionless store in central London using computer vision technology supplied by Israeli artificial intelligence startup Trigo, the British food retailer announced in October. Shoppers will be required to use the automated system to make purchases at the approximately 2,400-square-foot (223 square meter) store in the city's High Holborn area, which is Tesco's first public location equipped with the equipment. Like Amazon Go stores, shoppers will be able to enter the store after having logged in with the app, shop at leisure putting items they would like to buy directly into their bags and then simply walk out. A series of AI-powered cameras and other sensors in the store monitor which items customers pick up and ultimatley take with them, calculates the total cost and then sends the customer a digital bill after leaving the store. Trigo’s GDPR compliant AI-solution is built with a privacy-by-design architecture which anonymizes a shopper’s movement and product choice data. No biometric or facial recognition data are gathered or analyzed. Even though Amazon beat Tesco to launching the first frictionless store in the UK earlier this year, Tesco has been looking at this technology for sometime, having worked with Trigo for a number of years and indeed having taken an undisclosed stake in the company two years ago. One area where they can claim to be first though is that this was an existing store which was converted to being a frictionless store whereas all of the Amazon Go stores have been new built from scratch stores. This is an important area of differentiation given the number of stores already in prime locations around the world which could theoretically become frictionless without the need for significant construction costs.