![]() ![]() In fact, the fast-food industry has been inching toward automation for years, with little success so far. But the Japanese company that made the humanoid machine told HuffPost last year that the robot “does not have the real capability for” kitchen work. This, they argued, would be the future of chefs if employers had to absorb the cost of a $15 hourly wage. Last year, the conservative Employment Policy Institute took out a misleading full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal showing a hachimaki-wearing Motoman SDA10 cooking food. Those who oppose raising the lowest guaranteed wage argue that if it becomes more expensive to employ humans, restaurant owners will simply replace workers with robots. This comes at a time when the humans currently filling fast-food jobs are demanding higher pay and better working conditions, including calls for a $15 minimum wage. "Unfortunately we are focused on other priorities at the moment and cannot divert resources to press," Vardakostas told HuffPost.Ī profile of Momentum, published Sunday by the robotics blog Singularity Hub, generated a new wave of interest in what conservative writers have dubbed the “minimum-wage-crushing” robots. Momentum, which declined to comment to The Huffington Post, doesn’t offer prices on its website, nor does it have a clear business plan or timeline for the chains it claims it will open. “It’s meant to completely obviate them.”Ī schematic of Momentum's invention, which grinds custom blends of meat, then roasts patties, slices tomatoes, assembles the sandwich and even bags the final product. “Our device isn’t meant to make employees more efficient,” co-founder Alexandros Vardakostas told Xconomy in 2012. This, its website claims, will "democratize access to high quality food, making it available to the masses." The group plans to sell its invention to restaurants and, eventually, open its own chain to sell gourmet burgers at fast-food prices by eliminating the cost of paying line cooks. The machine is capable of cranking out 360 burgers per hour, according to Momentum Machines' website. Momentum Machines of San Francisco has invented a fully-automated contraption that can grind meat, slice tomatoes, grill patties, wrap fully cooked burgers and do pretty much anything else human fast-food workers can do. But a group of engineers claims to have finally found a way to get rid of pesky humans once and for all. For three decades now, the idea that robots will replace fast-food workers has been more of a pipe dream of tightwad business owners than a reality. ![]()
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