AI robot on CES 2020 show floor is making 300 pizzas an hour

CES 2020 - The future is now. Pizza-making robots are making delicious 12-inch pizzas on the show floor of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week.

3

Picnic is a Seattle-based "innovator of food production technology and Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) solutions" that has teamed with live event hospitality leader Centerplate, to serve CES attendees fresh pizza. Picnic's robot is capable of making 300 12-inch pizzas an hour, which is a helluva lot of pizza per day.

The AI-powered pizza making robot uses a vision system to make adjustments to the pie if it is off-center, with Picnic CEO Clayton Wood explaining: "Picnic's distinct culmination of food production customization and throughput, smart data and cloud analytics is quickly resonating with food service operators".

3

He continued: "Our continued relationship with Centerplate illustrates our ability to tailor our offerings to the specific needs of our partners and jointly transform the food experience for their consumers. This is one robot that won't be a CES exhibitor only showing futuristic concepts; it is already in use in real-world kitchen settings and will only continue to grow its capabilities, as will be seen through Picnic's delivery of mass customization food production and great-tasting pizza provided to CES attendees".

This story was a little too delicious for me, the thought of an AI robotic system making pizzas on its own was too cool, so I bit a bit deeper into the story.

3

Picnic's modular system is the first of its kind, and isn't just a pizza-making system... it is configurable to a consumers need, be it a large-scale restaurant or small mom-and-pop operation. Picnic's modular robotic system will soon branch out from just making pizzas, to making sandwiches, salads, bowls, and more -- and more precisely than any human chef.

The system can make 180 x 18-inch pizzas or 300 x 12-inch pizzas per hour with AI precision, and most important of all -- perfect consistency. Humans can't be 100% consistent and while in cooking robots can't either, but they'll get impossibly close to that. Picnic users computer vision and deep learning to ensure that output meets the customers exact standards.

Best of all, this reduces food waste, and reduces costs.

Picnic also offers a no cost up-front deal with their Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) model, where you'll get their entire system without spending any money up front. Picnic will then deliver, install, and maintain your robotic chef system with a subscription-based model. In Picnic's own words: "You're not just getting our system, you're getting an entire suite of services including cloud analytics, around-the-clock performance monitoring, and continuous free software and hardware upgrades for life".