Flippy the Burger Flipping Robot

Rich DeMuro eats a hamburger grilled up by a robot named Flippy, now cooking at a chain called Caliburger in Pasadena, California.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
A burger flipping robot. I'm Rich Dimiro. This is Rich
on Tech Daily. Recently I went to Cali Berger in Pasadena,
California to check out a brand new burger flipping robot
named Flippy. We got to see this thing in action,
and let me tell you, this could be the future
for fast food restaurants. So today is the first day
for Flippy on the job, but we were there for

(00:24):
a preview event where it grilled up some hamburgers for us.
So how does it work? All Right, So a coworker
puts the raw patties on the grill and then the
robot goes to work, so it senses when these things
need to be flipped and when they need to be
taken off the grill. The company says it can use
thermal imaging, three D and camera vision to do all
that stuff, and of course there's a little dose of

(00:47):
artificial intelligence thrown in. So the more that this robot
cooks burger's, the more it learns how to do that better.
The robot was created by a company called Miso Robotics,
also out of Pasadena. It's actually a obsidiary of the
same company, Cali Group that owns Cali Berger, and if
you know anything about Cali Burger, I think it seems

(01:07):
a little similar to another place called in and Out Burger.
Apparently a lot of other people think the same thing.
I was in Hong Kong. I saw one of these
Cali Burger locations and it looks a lot like in
an out Burger. But anyway, you can do some searching
on Google and apparently other people think the same. But
I digress. So we did watch this flippy make the burgers.

(01:28):
It took them off the grill. It wasn't perfect and
it's not super fast. But again, this is the first
iteration of this thing. It's gonna get better as time
goes on. It takes a lot of programming to do this.
In fact, we saw it mess up just a little bit.
The first batch of burgers had to be thrown out
for some reason. They didn't really tell us why. But
the second batch did come out okay. In fact, we
ate them. Mine was delicious. I mean the thing basically

(01:50):
flips the burger, then it takes it off the grill,
puts it on a tray for a human to kind
of finish with all the toppings and the bun and everything.
Tasted fresh. The burger tasted good. It was cooked well
and or I should say not well done. It was
just cooked very good. So it tasted really nice. So
why is Cali Berger doing this Well, they want to
cut down on training costs. They say that that grill

(02:11):
cook job is not very desirable. People start it and
then they realize, I don't really like this job, and
so they want to move on to something else. And
this will cut down on training costs because if you
have a robot doing this day in day out, they
don't have to think about another human doing it every
single day, or a new human every single day. But
these robots are not cheap. They cost sixty thousand dollars minimum.

(02:33):
And this is the first one. So if you want
to see this thing in action, you can check it
out at the Cali Burger in Pasadena. It is sort
of in the front of the house. They don't have
it hidden in the back of the kitchen because people
want to see this thing. It's kind of neat to
see Flippy in action. But they say they are going
to expand it into other restaurants. They do have a
bunch of them worldwide. This Cali Burger chain has restaurants
all over the world. I don't think the human workers

(02:55):
are going away anytime soon, but like the company said,
they're definitely a nice addition to the human workers, so
basically think of them as co workers miso robotics that
it's kind of that third hand in the kitchen. So
there you have it. Flippy now cooking at the Caliberger
in Pasadena, California. If you want to see a video
on it, just go to my Facebook page Facebook dot

(03:16):
com slash rich on tech. You can watch Flippy in
action from start to finish. And if you enjoy this podcast,
the best thing you can do is rate and review
it in the podcasts app on your iPhone. So many
of you have done that. I really do appreciate it.
That's how Apple shows it to more people, so we
can get this discovered by a lot more folks. Thanks
so much for listening. I'm rich damiro rich on tech

(03:38):
dot Tv is a link to go to for more information.
I'll talk to you next time.