Coming Soon To A Restaurant Near You—Drone Waiters

 Robotics  

On your next trip to Singapore, don't be surprised if you are served by flying robots as waiters in some restaurants. Infinium-Serve, the autonomous flying robotic waiters, will be first launched next year.

Soon, going to a restaurant in Singapore might involve being served by autonomous flying robots.

Infinium-Serve, from Infinium Robotics is the world’s first commercial attempt to offer drone restaurant service.

"This will result in an enhanced dining experience which will eventually lead to increased sales and revenue for the restaurants."

Infinium-Serve, the autonomous flying robotic waiters, will be first launched at one of Timbre Group’s five outlets in Singapore. Infinium Robotics CEO Woon Junyang estimated the project to cost a “low seven-figure sum” for the five outlets, subject to final negotiations and certain variables of the actual deployment of the robots.

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To enable autonomous collision-free multiple unit deployment in confined spaces, Infinium Robotics has developed its own proprietary flight controller on board the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as well as in-house trajectory planning and model predictive control (MPC) algorithms, otherwise known as swarm technology. According to Infinium, positioning precision can only be up to 1 cm of error.

Infinium Robotics signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Timbre Group recently to pursue development of the drone waiters. Both companies are seeking productivity-related government grants to help offset deployment costs.

Woon said he is confident that such robotic solutions will help alleviate the Singapore’s labor crunch. This technology being deployed into restaurants would take away mundane tasks of serving food and drinks, and allow human waiters to focus on higher-value tasks such as getting feedback from customers, he said.

“This will result in an enhanced dining experience which will eventually lead to increased sales and revenue for the restaurants,” he added.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong observes a smart flying robotic waiter serving food during a demonstration
Image Source- Ooi Boon Keong/Today Online

A prototype of Infinium-Serve was showcased to Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the inaugural launch of the National Productivity Month in early October.


SOURCE  Channel News Asia

By 33rd Square

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