Joun_Lord wrote:I suspect a robot restaurant would not be completely automated no matter how much a whiny CEO would want it. I think it would be something similar to self-checkouts in stores. Part of the restaurant would be mostly automated for smaller orders but for custom orders and the like there would still be human attendants. There would still humans even for the automated area just the same as you'd find at a Walmart or Krogers, someone who is there to press a button anytime the machines have a hiccup and to help people out when they need it. Still saves labor though, much how like a Walmart can have one person doing the jobs of 4 or more these restaurants might be similar.
A downside of self-checkouts that's seldom mentioned is increased theft – at work a significant percentage of theft at the store is through the self-checkouts when a customer only rings up
part of their cart of items.
As someone else mentioned, in an automated restaurant you're going to have more vandalism. You'll have people installing data skimmers on the pay slots. You'll have other, unforeseen effects. That may not discourage automation in the long run, but it will affect adoption.
One of the things that would probably be looked at for restaurants who want complete automation in the near future would be some sort of 3D printing. Of course that has the problem of when 3D printing is fast and reliable enough to be put in restaurants for people to order printed burgers, surely the tech would be mature enough for home use. There in lies a problem, why go to a restaurant and toss a dollar or 5 dollars on some burger that some machine crapped out when you could stay home and do the same? Assuming some laws don't clamp the nuts of 3D printing in the near future of concerns of hurting business or something, 3D printers of all types will become increasingly adopted by consumers.
Are you sure?
Right now, although the price has come down, 3D printers are still expensive and there is still a learning curve to getting good results. They strike me as like “desktop publishing” - yes, the average consumer could have such a set up at home, but most do not. Which is why we have places like Kinko's and other print shops where you can go and essentially rent the use of the machines when you need them, but not have to worry about buying or maintaining them yourself. This is already happening with 3D printing with businesses offering to print your item for you for a small fee.
Joun_Lord wrote:Some people don't care about how the food is made but quite a few people nowadays do. Look at the rise of restaurants like Chipotle which tout how fresh and locally sourced and sustainable their ingredients are. How alot of restaurants like Chipotle and even some McDonalds are embracing an
open kitchen approach.
Actually McDonalds was the original open-kitchen restaurant back in the 1950's. Ray Kroc made a point of that for the first restaurants he opened because he wanted people to see what they were getting and how it was made as a form of reassurance. Apparently, there was deep suspicion regarding small eateries back then. The kitchens became more and more closed off with time, but most of them you actually can see the food being made if you bother to look.
I could very easily see some restaurants taking a page from Star Trek and still getting business despite home 3D food printers because people might prefer the "real" food prepared by real people or think 3D printed food tastes inferior. Of course that would probably be the opposite of what is being discussed, that would be less automation and more people.
In Star Trek at least part of the restaurant/bar experience is the social aspect. People will still go out, because you don't always want to entertain in homes, a restaurant is “neutral” territory, and so on.
By the same token, do you have any evidence that people are going to fewer movies yearly opting to stay in? Also, if you can prove that last point, do you have proof that this is due to preference over having less disposable income as cost of living outpaces wages?
I don't know if they are staying in to watch movies, they could be doing something else I dunno, but certainly
fewer people are going to theaters then they once were. Though it could very well have alot to do with costs but that certainly wouldn't be the only reason. Cost is a big part though, as ticket prices rise its not worth it to go to a theater and deal with all the headaches while staying home is easier and cheaper. Or something.
Well, part of this is having more options. When I was 10 years old you had basically two viewing options: go to the theater, or watch TV. In both cases, your choices were limited to what someone else decided to schedule and when. Then we got home video machines. I don't think people remember how deeply fearful the big media companies were of that tech when it first arrived, then became affordable for the average household. It did have an impact – theaters got smaller for each viewing, even as their screens multiplied. Rental shops opened up, as well as stores selling videos. Then we got widespread cable TV with multiple channels. All of this whittled away at the theaters and TV. Movies moved towards multi-million dollar blockbusters that “needed” a big screen for full impact, which kept people coming in. TV channels showing vintage shows have popped up, so people don't have to acquire libraries of such shows. We have streaming, on-demand viewing, and so forth.
And yes, big-ass TV's.
All of this has whittled away at the movie+theater model. It hasn't destroyed it, but it certainly has changed it considerably.
It's a good thing for some people – yes, we have huge TV and usually take the trade-off of waiting for movie to come out on disk to see them (we just acquired
The Martian last week, to give you an idea of the typical time lapse) because it's a lot easier on my disabled spouse than having to deal with crowds, seating issues, and sometimes having to dash to the bathroom – at home we hit “pause”, at the theater his simply misses a lot of the movie he paid a chunk of money to see.
There's also a safety issue – we've had a few massacres at theaters, a lot of people are leery of crowds (rightly or wrongly) in this era of terrorism. This, too, is another factor.
Napoleon the Clown wrote:With regards to drunks and automated taxis, I have to question how well their drunk ass will be able to communicate/operate the machine interface. Or, when they just give a vague statement on where they want to go. I'm sure Raw Shark can relate instances where the fair had no clue what the address or name of the thing was, just that it was by something else memorable. Then the lazy bastards that don't want to have to punch in an address, and don't like repeating themselves until a computer translates what they're saying. A lot of accents would need programmed in to use pure speech recognition. Once again, drunken ramblings will need accounted for.
Not insurmountable problems, but they'll definitely delay things.
Using just speech recognition sort of sucks for people with speech impediments or who can't talk – we have to deal with this from time to time at work – people with speaking problems due to stroke, neurological disorders, deafness... A human being can deal with these situations far better than a computer, and even then there are issues. Will there be a text input option for those people? Or are they just fucking screwed?
Self-checkouts with touch-screens are NOT user-friendly for the blind, even if the nice machine can speak to you. Whoever designs those things assumes that everyone who uses them can see what's on the screen. One reason for human attendants is to basically run the machine for such people.
Oh, and one of our regular customers is a man half the normal human height – he'll give you an earful about screens and input devices in self-serve machines that are literally out of his reach. One reason he shops at our store is that he
can physically reach/operate the self-checkouts and ATMs we have. And there is sufficient staff to get things down off the top shelves for him when he needs help.
Can the machines slow down for the elderly and/or mentally slow? Humans can, but machines don't always do this and it can make them unusable for a certain slice of the populations who simply need more time to do the same thing.
Too many machines are designed for the average, healthy, adult man – and I am neither male nor the average height of one. I'm only marginally impacted, there are people for who “average” is a barrier, and these things are very often overlooked in the discussions of automation.
Guardsman Bass wrote:Some of those might be simpler if you integrated a taxi-service specific phone app into it. Then you could hail a cab with an app, and have your phone prompt you where you want to go - at which point you can drunkenly say, "Home" and it takes you there.
I'm always a mix of amused and perterbed at this presumption that EVERYONE has a smart phone. No, they actually don't. Market penetration is only around 50% it the US.
Of course, you
can simply say fuck you to those without the latest tech, the business model seems to work for Uber, after all, but even if market penetration on smart phones reaches 90% at some point you're still going to have people losing their phones or too drunk to use them or speak coherently. I suppose the taxi can be programmed to take the passed out drunks to the local ER, but the devil is very much in the details.
I'm not so sure they'll be quickly replaced. If something minor breaks down on the truck, are you going to drive a crew out to fix it? That might be more expensive than just having someone ride along until something breaks on the auto-driven truck.
If it's actually minor the truck can probably keep going until the next truck stop, where the machine can call for maintenance.
Even now, with drivers, if you have a major breakdown that stops the truck you
still have to send out a repair crew or a tow truck.
And with delivery drivers, you've also got the issue of unloading small amounts of cargo and packages. The big deliveries are no problem - you can have the folks at the destination unload it, or even an automated system. But, say, deliveries to someone's house? Are you just going to ping people's phones and tell them to come outside and get their package on the truck?
For that sort of thing you have a ride-along human to act as package delivery/pick up person and act as a security guard on the truck. At least until they automate that job away.
Guardsman Bass wrote:I just wouldn't under-estimate people's ability to adapt to new jobs, at least when they're young and the economy's good.
But you clearly, with the qualification of “young”, under-estimate the adaptability of us older folks who ALSO NEED TO WORK. I've got at least 20 years prior to any plans to retire, but when I look for work I can be dismissed out of hand based
solely on my age. Nevermind I am still very capable of learning new things and I'm more adaptable than some of the coworkers half my age.
Given we're anticipating the upcoming unemployment of tens of millions maybe it's time to remove some of the age bias? The new work isn't going to require brute force strength, after all, that's why I have a forklift at work instead of buff young man-slaves to move shit.
Or were you just planning to discard anyone over an arbitrary age?
Simon_Jester wrote:It's not very hard to just program the trucks to run on relatively high traffic roads or during business hours, both of which most trucks do anyway. There aren't a lot of good reasons to be driving an eighteen-wheeler down a narrow rural highway at two o'clock in the morning, as opposed to parking it in a depot and finishing the drive at seven o'clock.
Unless I'm missing something about the trucking business.
Yes, you are.
Truckers drive at night because there is less traffic overall. Even for automated vehicles, less traffic on the road translates to better efficiency.
There are also scheduling issues – where I work nearly all trucks arrive at night so they can be unloaded and the new stock, particularly food, on the shelves between 6 am and 8 am when the first surge of customers arrive.
Package delivery services usually give a “guaranteed delivery by 8 am” or similar option, but for that to happen those guys have to drive overnight, too.
For truly a truly cross-country journey there are still trucks stocked with crews that can drive most or even all of the 24 hours in the day to move stuff across the continent in a minimum number of days.
