Robots are now getting into the restaurant business, thanks to an eatery in China that is starting to use them to cook and deliver food.
The restaurant opened in Kushan last week, and is using the machines for a variety of purposes, such as greeting customers, delivering dishes to tables and stir-frying meat and vegetables, according to Yahoo! News.
Two robots stand at the front door to happily say hello to customers. Four shot humanoid machines are given the task of bringing trays of food to tables. Two large blue robots with glowing eyes are designed for frying food. Another spends its time making dumplings.
Founder of the restaurant Song Yugang said he got the idea to use the machines when his daughter asked him to invent a robot because she didn't like to do housework, The Times of India reported. He added that the cost for building each robot is almost equal to a human employee's annual salary, which is 40,000 yuan ($6,500).
"The robots can understand 40 everyday sentences. They can't get sick or ask for vacation," Yugang said. He added that charging up the robots for two hours will enable them to work for five hours.
Human employees also play a part in the robots' work, giving them ingredients and helping them make dishes on some occasions. The machines are only capable of moving along fixed paths, and whenever their routes are blocked, they politely ask customers to move out of their way.
Manufacturers in China have been looking into automation as a solution for rising labor costs, resulting in the country becoming the world's biggest consumer of industrial robots last year, taking the title from Japan, Yahoo! News reported.
The Kushan eatery, located in the eastern province of Jiangsu, is not the first in China to make use of automated machines - a restaurant that opened in the northeastern city of Harbin in 2012 also employed robots as servers.
The Kushan restaurant robots have received praise from many customers, such as Yang Limei, a mother of three, The Times of India reported.
"My children are really excited about the robots," Limei said.
"I've never seen a robot serving food before," said nine-year-old Yuan Yuan. "I'm really surprised."
