Good food.
Cuter robots.
RoPot started with a problem every hotpot place has: the ingredient station is the slowest part of the night, and the part customers most want to look at. So we handed the reaching to two robotic arms and pointed a camera at it.
Almost everyone here
is a robot.
The servers are robots. They bring trays out, clear plates and keep track of which pot belongs to which table — which turns out to be the thing humans get wrong most often on a Friday night.
The ingredient station is run by two collaborative arms. When you order, the nearest free arm turns, reaches into the tray you picked, closes its gripper on exactly one portion and drops it into your bowl. About a second and a half, every time, whether it’s six o’clock or the middle of the rush.
Two jobs are not automated and won’t be. The kitchen is a team of people: broths simmered overnight, dumplings pleated by hand, every bit of knife work done by someone who has done it a thousand times. And there is always a manager on the floor, because when something has gone wrong you want a person, not a status light.
Robots on the floor. People on the wok.
We think that’s the honest version of a robot restaurant. The machines do the repetitive, precise, boring part. The cooking — the part that actually decides whether dinner was any good — stays with the cooks.