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As a seasoned restaurant consultant deeply entrenched in the industry, I've got my finger on the pulse of what's happening. Running a restaurant has always been a tough gig. Everyone seems to think their family recipe will turn into a gold mine, but sadly, it's not just about the quality of Grandma's lasagna. There are myriad challenges to navigate in this business. From securing the right location and talent to nailing down a winning concept, dealing with everything from theft to insurance, not to mention the endless stream of fees, licenses, and paperwork, the restaurant industry can nickel and dime...

While in graduate school Matt Schwartz had an epiphany. At the time, he was learning about the food system as part of Stanford University’s Earth Program and also participating in an internship with food tech investor Dave Friedberg, and it was this combination of advanced education with a front-row seat to food tech innovation that helped him to see the future. “That’s when I came to believe that things were heading towards fresh,” Schwartz told me this week in a Zoom interview. “That we need to move towards a more nutrient-dense form of eating, a less calorie dense form of...

Tiny self-propelled robo-fish can swim around, latch on to free-floating microplastics and fix itself if it gets damaged Scientists have designed a tiny robot-fish that is programmed to remove microplastics from seas and oceans by swimming around and adsorbing them on its soft, flexible, self-healing body. Microplastics are the billions of tiny plastic particles which fragment from the bigger plastic things used every day such as water bottles, car tyres and synthetic T-shirts. They are one of the 21st century’s biggest environmental problems because once they are dispersed into the environment through the breakdown of larger plastics they are very...

A crewless autonomous boat attempting to take the route of the Mayflower's 1620 sea voyage has finally arrived at the shores of North America, but on the coast of Canada instead of Massachusetts, where the original boat landed. The robotic boat reached Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Sunday following a ride across the Atlantic Ocean from England that lasted more than five weeks, according to IBM, which built the artificial intelligence captain that makes all the ship’s decision. The Mayflower Autonomous Ship did not have a captain, navigator or any other people aboard. The ship's first attempt to cross the Atlantic...

Lethal autonomous weapons systems demand careful consideration but nightmare scenarios of the future won't become reality anytime soon, says a UNSW Canberra military ethicist. The term 'killer robots' conjures up images of sci-fi scenarios where wars are being fought by Terminator-like soldiers, but according to UNSW Canberra military ethicist Deane-Peter Baker, it's not quite that scary or cinematic. In fact, killer robots, or lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS), may actually save lives on the battlefield. Associate Professor Baker's latest book, "Should we Ban Killer Robots?," draws from his experience on the International Panel on the Regulation of Autonomous Weapons (IPRAW)...

A U.K.-based company Engineered Arts has developed a humanoid robot that can display human-like expressions with ease. In a short video released on YouTube, the company shows off its most advanced humanoid, dubbed Ameca, which is initially a platform for testing robotic technologies. A U.K.-based company Engineered Arts has developed a humanoid robot that can display human-like expressions with ease. In a short video released on YouTube, the company shows off its most advanced humanoid, dubbed Ameca, which is initially a platform for testing robotic technologies. As is seen in the video above, the humanoid appears to have woken up...

When Australia decided to buy a fleet of new nuclear-powered attack submarines earlier this month, it sparked international outrage. China labelled it a “cold war, zero sum mentality”. France was enraged at being left out. The deal will cost Australia $100 billion, and hand UK and US technology to a fleet of attack submarines, the apex predators of naval warfare. But by the time they are delivered in 20 years’ time, these submarines could be obsolete. No one really knows how these submarines would perform in a conflict situation. It’s true that submarines have occasionally launched cruise missiles at land...

On September 9, Israel defense company Elbit announced the ARCAS, or Assault Rifle Combat Application System. The device is a combination of a gunsight, operating system, and an augmented reality display. If it proves useful in combat, it heralds a future in which soldiers not only aim rifles, but where the rifles tell soldiers information about who they are aiming at. ARCAS is an after-market add-on to existing rifles, converting the familiar weapon of infantry into the central node in an array of sensor-rich technologies. Elbit is marketing it for both Special Operations forces, who are accustomed to training with...

Ask for a roast beef sandwich at an Arby’s drive-thru east of Los Angeles and you may be talking to Tori — an artificially intelligent voice assistant that will take your order and send it to the line cooks. “It doesn’t call sick,” says Amir Siddiqi, whose family installed the AI voice at its Arby’s franchise this year in Ontario, California. “It doesn’t get corona. And the reliability of it is great.” The pandemic didn’t just threaten Americans’ health when it slammed the U.S. in 2020 — it may also have posed a long-term threat to many of their jobs....

An octopus-inspired, origami robotic arm. Credit: Shuai Wu. A combined team of researchers from The Ohio State University and the Georgia Institute of Technology has developed a robot arm that moves like an octopus arm without the need for a motor. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their robot arm, which moves in response to changes in a magnetic field around it. Noting that the need for motors and control units makes most robot arms big and heavy, the researchers set themselves the goal of building one that would not need...

An Oklahoma mom heroically made the decision to fly to the middle east in an effort to save as many members of the Afghan’s Girls Robotics Team as possible. The mother to 11-children, Allyson Reneau is a Harvard graduate who holds a Master’s degree in international relations and US space policy. After watching the news, horrified by the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan as Taliban forces advanced, 60-year-old Reneau, took it upon herself to try and save members of the Afghan Girls Robotic Team. A call to Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Ok), a ranking member of the Armed Services Committee was her...

A town in northern Japan has recently been plagued by a plethora of wild bears, roaming around neighborhoods and petrifying residents. In an attempt to prevent attacks, the town of Takikawa has now installed terrifying robotic wolves to howl at the bears and scare them off, Reuters reports. The residents of Takikawa, located on the northernmost island of Hokkaido, have been increasingly concerned by the potential of bear attacks, as sightings in the country hit a five-year high, according to national broadcaster NHK. There have been dozens of reported attacks this year, two of them fatal, leading to an emergency...

The Air Force deployed four-legged “robot dogs” to defend its perimeters during a recent field test, The Drive reports. The “robot dogs” the Air Force was testing are called Vision 60 and were built by Ghost Robotics, and they look a bit like the villains in the “Metalhead” episode of “Black Mirror.” They’re designed to conduct remote inspection, surveillance, or mapping missions, as The Drive reports, and could be used to patrol perimeters at air bases as well. “Strategic partners can build solution-specific [Quadrupedal Unmanned Ground Vehicles] for virtually any use-case with their choice of sensors, radios and even size...

Electronic skins that perform the same sensory functions as human skin could mean big things for the fields of robotics and medical devices, and scientists are not solely focused on just the pleasant ones. Researchers in Australia have succeeded in developing an artificial skin that responds to painful stimuli in the same way real skin does, which they see as an important step towards intelligent machines and prosthetics. It mightn’t seem like the most practical of goals, but researchers have been working to develop electronic skins that allow robots and prostheses to feel pain for quite some time. These technologies...

A Texas company claims it has a solution for COVID-19 ... a robot that can kill the virus ... feds, hospitals and universities are already buying in, and pro sports could be next. Here's the deal ... San Antonio-based Xenex Disinfection Services claims they have perfected a $100,000 robot that can zap the deadly virus to death, and it's already being used by the Department of Defense, Mayo Clinic and prestigious universities, with more deep-pocketed clients waiting in the wings. The so-called savior is dubbed the Xenex LightStrike Germ-Zapping Robot ... and we're told it's already decontaminating workspaces at 10...

This winter semester, more UW-Madison students are bundled up inside, counting on app-based delivery robots to feed their appetites. The maker Starship launched a fleet of thirty self-navigating campus food carriers in November. Since then, Peter Testory, the university’s director of dining, said orders have jumped more than 700 percent. Testory said there’s also a correlation between bad winter weather and service use. When the order comes in with a “ding,” dining staff prepare the food at a campus kitchen. Runners or, oftentimes, kitchen managers take the food to the delivery bots parked outside. Once runners close the lids, the...

It’s San Francisco, so naturally there’s some controversy. Burgers are the number one segment of restaurant food, ripe for disruption by robotics, and the VCs are pouncing. Robots might take away fast-food jobs, or create better ones, so the labor activists are activating. But today I just want to understand how they made it. How two young engineers could invent a complicated culinary robot that makes cheeseburgers from scratch. Really good ones. I’m on my second visit to Creator, the world’s only robotic hamburger restaurant. Since opening doors in September 2018, it has built a rep for quality and innovation,...

Afood-ferrying robot cat with attitude has been revealed at the CES 2020 tech expo in Las Vegas as a solution to understaffed restaurants. The BellaBot, developed by Chinese company PuduTech, is a robotic waiter capable of delivering up to 10kg of restaurant orders to waiting customers. While its body is comprised of a stack of shelves carrying food trays, BellaBot has the head, face and personality of a crotchety feline. The robot – described as a “cute kitty” by its creators – can move autonomously through restaurants, meowing at customers as it arrives to encourage them to collect their order....

A robot will be serving food to thousands of guests at next month's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Seattle-based Picnic says its automated food assembly system will produce up to 300 12-inch customized pizzas an hour on the CES show floor.

In the highly competitive race to get self-driving cars to the market, most companies hold their secrets close. But when it comes to helping those cars figure out where they are on the road, some experts are ready to open up. Argo AI, based in the Strip District, and Aptiv, based in O’Hara, publicly released some of their own data sets earlier this year in an effort to further advancement in the field. The companies shared parts of their own maps of cities where they are testing self-driving cars, including Pittsburgh. That may seem strange considering the abundance of applications...