Even Robots Get Fired

China Is Firing Its Robot Waiters

Dan Seitz | April 6, 2016

Recently, the CEO of Hardee’s opined, as many have in the past, that if the government keeps insisting on driving up that minimum wage, well, they might have to replace human workers with cheaper robots. At the time, we laid out a few rather serious problems with that concept and it turns out that China decided to go ahead and prove just how right we were.
Several restaurant in Guangzhou have either completely fired or mostly dismissed their robot staff. The idea, of course, was that the robots would offer both novelty and reduced labor costs, but while the former came together, the latter not so much. Turns out the robots were lousy waiters, spilling soup and breaking down frequently, and their human coworkers found them pretty limited. For example, if a customer wanted the robot to pour a drink, it had to fetch a human to do it.

"He opened Tian Waike as a showcase for his creations, and the novelty value of having your food prepared by a robot with a stirrer instead of a hand has proved a popular draw." Source: https://munchies.vice.com/en/articles/robots-cooked-and-served-my-dinner

<more at http://uproxx.com/technology/china-firing-robot-waiters/; related articles and links: http://uproxx.com/life/fast-food-robots/ (+Video) (Why Robots Aren’t Ready To Take Over Fast Food. March 26, 2016) and https://munchies.vice.com/en/articles/robots-cooked-and-served-my-dinner (https://munchies.vice.com/en/articles/robots-cooked-and-served-my-dinner. September 5, 2014)>