Design of robot integrated restaurant

• Main Author: Santhosh Pandiaraj
• Other Authors: Xie Ming
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2020
• Subjects: Engineering::Mechanical engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/140584
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Over the years, industrial revolution has caused huge difference in various sectors around the world. Industrial revolution has allowed many sectors to become more efficient and productive in terms of wealth and productivity. Coupled with industrial revolution, the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has opened up new horizons for the usage of robots. Manufacturing sectors have benefitted from the usage of robots to carry out complex tasks such as machine tool tending, material removal, welding, assembly and so on. With the assistance of AI, these robots are now able to carry out complex tasks as good as human beings or ever better helping to reduce their cost of production. The main issue right now would the rising cost of labour due to the shortage of manpower in Food and Beverages (F&B) industry. Restaurants located in countries such as Belgium, Sweden etc incur huge labour cost, paying off the wages of waiters and chefs as it continues to rise rapidly. Moreover, the recent increase in shortage of waiters has only worsen this problem. This is largely due to the fact that more and more people despise waitering as it is viewed to be a mundane and tiring job with the skills acquired from waitering not proving to be useful for their career ambitions. With more and more jobs which are less mundane and tiring opening up due to industrial revolution and technological advancement, people are increasingly reluctant to take on waitressing unless the pay is relatively higher than the market average. In order to tackle these problems, the author has identified integrating robots in the F&B industry to take over the roles of waiters and chefs in restaurants as the most desirable solution. This project goes on to show the benefits of integrating robots in restaurants and how the cost of integrating robots have been deemed to be much cheaper compared to human labour. On top of that, this project shows how robots tend to be much more efficient and productive in their service as they do not grow tired as the day goes by, do not need to take breaks or medical leaves like humans do. The fact that robots can consistently cook and serve food which meet the desired standard of the restaurant owners, regardless of how long they have been working makes them standout as well. The outcome due to the integration of robots in restaurant has been very encouraging. The data gathered has shown a drop in the total cost incurred by the restaurant owners and the time taken to serve the customers. Hence, this projects works towards analysing how significant the drop in cost and the time taken has been and analyses how successful the integration of robots in restaurant has been.