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Overcooked? Why robotic pizza makers are failing

bbc.com

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Re: Overcooked? Why robotic pizza makers are failing

#71

Post by cooggog »

swiftcoder wrote: post #61
legacynl wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humans making shitty pizza is not a news. If humans were making shitty pizza on average, these companies wouldn't be pouring in their dollars trying to imitate it. >I've had my fair share of shitty human made pizza so this kind of sounds like the autonomous taxi news cycle to me I think you need to check the definition of 'news'. Something that happens everyday isn't 'news'.

> If humans were making shitty pizza on average I don't know about that. Shitty pizza sells very well. Nobody frequents fast-food pizza chains because of the quality of their pies...

> Shitty pizza sells very well.

I’ve heard they’re hurting nowadays because many of them outsourced delivery to Uber Eats/Doordash and are so fucking expensive now, you may as well go to a nicer pizza place.

Re: Overcooked? Why robotic pizza makers are failing

#73

Post by card_zero »

dakolli wrote: post #52
thrownawaysz wrote: post #15

I've had my fair share of shitty human made pizza so this kind of sounds like the autonomous taxi news cycle to me Thousands of car crashes a day > not a news A Waymo crashed > national news Humans making shitty pizza is not a news. But robots burning a pizza is a news. It'll get better.

I prefer when people employ their fellow neighbors and uplift their community with their enterprises. This type of automation is inherently selfish and should be discouraged, im glad he lost 200k, that 200k could have been used to help employee a few college students who would go onto provide way more value to their community than a robot ever would. Honestly if you see a company with robots like this, they hate thei…

The article makes it sound like Lee Kindell is replacing himself, not employees: he "once made all his dough by hand – until an elbow tendon injury forced him to investigate using machines instead". Then he got two robots. But you might question why they had to be robots, that part is unexplained. Later on he suggests he can employ people serving the pizza instead and in this way get a higher pizza throughput. Though in fact his robots are broken due support vanishing vaporously so presumably at present he either does indeed employ some humans, or produces no pizza except imaginary future autonomous pizza, which is coming soon, just a matter of time.

Re: Overcooked? Why robotic pizza makers are failing

#74

Post by snovv_crash »

zarzavat wrote: post #36
snovv_crash wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specialized machines can absolutely do a fantastic dough kneeding and rolling process, and spreading ingredients is also trivial with the right tools.

Pizza dough is usually not rolled, it's stretched. If you roll it then you will press out the air bubbles which makes the final crust denser. That's not always a bad thing and some pizza makers do swear by rolling, but it does mean you end up with a different pizza than an average human would make.

A specialized machine for stretching isn't that hard either.

Re: Overcooked? Why robotic pizza makers are failing

#75

Post by _puk »

delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #58
_puk wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's financial incentive for it to, why wouldn't it?

There’s physics for one. The dough takes the temperature and time it takes to bake in the oven, the rocket needs certain ampunt of propulsion to fly etc.

So, the "it'll get better" is the robot pizza learning.

There's no reason it won't improve because we know that there is actually a world in which amazing pizzas exist.

Teleporters seems a rather random comparison for the sibling reply

Re: Overcooked? Why robotic pizza makers are failing

#76

Post by bakies »

hnlmorg wrote: post #27
operation_moose wrote: post #11

I wonder how many compromises of quality go into a robotic pizza? You're not getting a robot to stretch out a 16" New York style crust; you might get it to crudely roll out a ball of dough into a thick disk. I'm sure there are certain toppings that are easy to lay out (sausage balls) and some that are difficult (onion slices) so those might get left off. At a certain point you're adapting a good pizza recipe into a p…

Rolling a thin base feels like an easy problem to solve. The question is whether rolling affects the base negatively compared to stretching.

And the answer is yes for specific pizza styles

Re: Overcooked? Why robotic pizza makers are failing

#78

Post by hnlmorg »

bakies wrote: post #76
hnlmorg wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rolling a thin base feels like an easy problem to solve. The question is whether rolling affects the base negatively compared to stretching.

And the answer is yes for specific pizza styles

Negatively enough that a consumer might notice? Baring in mind we are talking about fastfood here. Not artisan/ restaurant quality food.

Genuine question because I’ve never made my own pizza base before so I have no frame of reference here.

By the way, which pizza styles were you referring to?

Re: Overcooked? Why robotic pizza makers are failing

#79

Post by beej71 »

In Seattle airport there's one of those McDonald's that has you order from the touch-screen booth and then pick up at the counter. (Maybe they're all like that now?) Just so dystopian to my eye. It didn't help that I was reading Mona Lisa Overdrive at the time. :)

I know fast food employees typically don't give a fuck (I was one way back) but there's always been something about a human being being there that I fundamentally appreciated about the experience.

[Cue the Carl's Jr ordering scene in Idiocracy]

And that counts double for the food being made. I don't want to hang the soulless robot painting in my house; I don't want to consume the soulless robot food. Even the teen just aching to get through his shift can't avoid imparting humanity to their work. If the burger is off-kilter, a person did that, and that's different than when an unsensing, unfeeling bot does.

[Cue the burger reveal scene from Falling Down]

But I'm old, so... you young whippersnappers and all that. Maybe it's different.

Re: Overcooked? Why robotic pizza makers are failing

#80

Post by newsomix9xl »

I read about a Japanese pizza maker: he went to Italy to study the craft masters, found the best flours and experimented with novel combinations, hand built a wood fire stove, and used choice produce and flawless execution to make world class pizza.

For a robot pizza maker I'm guessing the back story is like this: entrepreneur who knows nothing about pizza decides paying minimum wage is a waste and opts to buy $160k in machinery to make mediocre pizza cheaper and faster.

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