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Re:What Undercover Boss and The Jetsons Tell Us About the Fu... by joe_the_user on Saturday September 28, 2013 @08:08PM (#6463574)
The robot in the picture seems to be inside a cylinder. Seems to effectively have all the qualities I mention.

Notice that it is created to manufacture Chinese food. A change in taste to Korean might obsolete it.

Prototypes can do lots of things. They tend to have durability and reliability problems.

Re:What Undercover Boss and The Jetsons Tell Us About the Fu... by moocowduckquack on Saturday September 28, 2013 @09:10PM (#6463700)
It seems to be a bit more flexible than what you were proposing in that it is a generic stir-fry bot, so should be able to produce any stir fry dish from chopped ingredients. Going from many chinese to korean dishes would seem to be a software download and ordering the ingredients. I agree that for some restaurants ambience is a major factor, but for fast street food a machine like this could do very well.

Plus, many chefs I know also have durability and reliabilty problems.

Re:What Undercover Boss and The Jetsons Tell Us About the Fu... by joe_the_user on Saturday September 28, 2013 @10:37PM (#6463884)
OK,

Try baked Italian dishes. Clearly there's a limit to the thing's flexibility. Not all Chinese dishes was conventional wok cooking for example.

Also, most humans aren't reliable but generally, you "rent" them rather than buying them - your cook get truly unreliable, you can find another cook. You would almost certainly have to buy a specialize Chinese food (or Wok-cooking) machine and so you'd be providing not just "health insurance" but "health care" for it if it broke down.

Re:What Undercover Boss and The Jetsons Tell Us About the Fu... by moocowduckquack on Saturday September 28, 2013 @10:49PM (#6463910)
Most Chinese takeaways are not well equipped for baked Italian dishes either. As for who owns it, I don't see why you wouldn't lease something like this in the same way that you can currently lease things like posh coffee machines when running a cafe so that if it breaks down it gets replaced by the leasing company.