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Robots in restaurants: Can a machine do your job better than you?

Myffy Rigby
Myffy Rigby

A noodle-cutting robot at Mrs Mi in Chatswood Chase shopping centre. More robots are taking over people's jobs in commercial kitchens and food preparation.
A noodle-cutting robot at Mrs Mi in Chatswood Chase shopping centre. More robots are taking over people's jobs in commercial kitchens and food preparation.Nic Walker

The robots are here, and they are threatening to revolutionise the way restaurants do their jobs.

Locally, restaurant group Taste of Shanghai has in its employ a robot with a slightly humanoid face, wearing a little hat, that will star at Sydney's Night Noodle Markets in Hyde Park, kicking off Thursday, October 8 and running until October 25.

The robot (as yet without a moniker, but Taste of Shanghai are holding a competition to name the industrious little guy) can cut roughly 11,000 – or 88kg kilograms – noodles an hour. That's definitely working at inhuman speeds. The robot is also a lot more exacting than a human hand could ever be when it comes to noodle consistency.

However when it comes to recipes, it turns out machines are pretty good at doing one central task (weld, pour, drill) but don't have the functionality to follow picture-led instructions like the ones from IKEA. Just like the rest of us.

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So. A world without work where robots would eventually take over tasks traditionally performed by people. What would that realistically mean?

In China, a gang of three-foot-high robots – which look vaguely reminiscent of the early X-Men Sentinels but are apparently modelled on the Japanese superhero Ultraman – have have been recruited to pre-cut noodles at a saving of a few thousand dollars per each human employee they're replacing.

The inventor, chef Cui Runguan, has sold around 3000 in China since launching them in 2011. Essentially, they are no more than giant machines programmed to repeat a chopping motion all day long. But they never stop. They're tireless noodle-cutting machines.

Until a robot can take those noodles, stir fry them with XO sauce and serve them up at 2am with a beer, the restaurant trade can probably breathe easy.

The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Month presented by Citi runs October 1-31, sydney.goodfoodmonth.com.

Myffy RigbyMyffy Rigby is the former editor of the Good Food Guide.

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