April Miller

The food and hospitality industries are facing massive labor shortages. A record-high 1 million restaurant and hotel workers quit their jobs in November 2021 alone, and companies face difficulty replacing these employees. Service robots have emerged as an ideal solution.

While food and hospitality aren’t traditionally automation-heavy industries, high demand and persistent labor issues are pushing them in that direction. This trend will likely last beyond the current worker shortage as more businesses recognize the benefits of these robots.

Delivery Bots

One of the most easily automatable tasks in restaurants and hotels is delivery. Robots can move food items from kitchens to tables or fresh towels to hotel rooms just as automated material movers work in warehouses. After automating deliveries, businesses can then use their limited human workforce to accomplish more challenging, nuanced work.

Orders for Savioke’s delivery robot Wall-E tripled at the pandemic’s start, finding work in hotels, restaurants and hospitals. The waist-high robot navigates through buildings with a system of cameras and uses a metal arm to push elevator buttons. A sealed component in Wall-E’s chassis keeps food and other items safe and warm as it carries them to customers.

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Robot Kitchens

Some restaurants have employed more specialized robots to automate cooking processes. Many tasks, like running a deep fryer or flipping burgers, are highly repetitive and time-based, making them ideal for automation. Just as RPA can reduce errors by 80 percent in data entry, kitchen robots can eliminate cooking errors through precision and repeatability.

A robot will uniformly cook food every time it makes it, ensuring consistent quality for customers. Since robots can’t carry diseases, they also reduce some health concerns that have risen amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cleaning Robots

The hospitality and food industries have also started using robotics to automate cleaning. This removes human workers from situations where they may contract diseases and gives them time to focus on more time-sensitive, value-adding needs.

Miso Robotics has equipped some restaurants with hand-scanning robots to detect whether employees have washed their hands thoroughly. Other hygiene bots travel through an area and use brushes, vacuums or ultraviolet light to clean and disinfect surfaces. This is an ideal area to automate since restaurants and hotels require frequent cleaning.

How Automation in Hospitality Affects Robotics

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Eventually, the labor shortage will fade, and restaurants and hotels can get their human workforces back to normal levels. However, that doesn’t mean hospitality robots will fall out of fashion. These bots can complement human workers as they do in factories, and robotics companies should prepare for that future.

Robotics manufacturers must make restaurant and hotel robots versatile to capitalize on this market. One of the reasons Wall-E has sold so well is because its relatively unspecialized design makes it applicable across a wide range of use cases.

Similarly, selective compliance assembly robot arm (SCARA) machines will garner the most revenue thanks to their versatility in kitchens. Businesses can use one device for various tasks, making them cost-effective and appealing.

Cost is another significant barrier to overcome. These sectors have suffered amid the pandemic, with 90,000 restaurants closing permanently and budgets tightening. Consequently, robots will have to be affordable to gain traction in this market. The robotics industry will likely emphasize cost-saving strategies to meet this need.

The Future of Hospitality Is Automated

Robots won’t fully replace human workers in food and hospitality, but they are reshaping the sectors. Robotics engineers should take note and create machines that serve this growing market segment. Companies that can meet these industries’ versatility and budget needs can drive future success.

April Miller is a managing editor of design technology at ReHack Magazine, as well as a contributing writer at sites such as Open Data Science and the Society of Women Engineers.