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Robotics

Picnic's pizza robot to crank out up to 300 pies per hour at CES

By David Szondy
December 22, 2019
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The food assembly system produces up to 300 pizzas an hour
Picnic
The food assembly system produces up to 300 pizzas an hour
Picnic
Centerplate Executive Chef Taylor Park stands in front of Picnic's automated pizza assembly robot at T-Mobile Park
Picnic

Visitors to this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at the Las Vegas Convention Center will have the option of chowing down on robot-made pizzas. Live event hospitality supplier Centerplate has selected Seattle-based food technology company Picnic to provide its automated food assembly system that will create up to 300 12-inch bespoke pizzas an hour on the CES show floor.

Originally developed for the high-volume production of bespoke pizzas, Picnic's automated food assembly system was trialed at the T-Mobile Park stadium in Seattle in October this year. The system is modular, freestanding, doesn't take up much space and uses deep-learning to adapt to its tasks and settings. According to Picnic, it requires little training to use and in addition to pizzas, it is also designed to prepare other types of food, including bun, bowl, tortilla, and plate formats.

Centerplate Executive Chef Taylor Park stands in front of Picnic's automated pizza assembly robot at T-Mobile Park
Picnic

Along with feeding hungry CES visitors, Picnic also sees its system being used in small shops, large chains, virtual restaurants, and ghost kitchens.

CES runs from January 7 to 10, 2020.

Source: Picnic

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RoboticsRoboticsFood technologyCES 2020New Atlas Audio
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David Szondy
David Szondy is a playwright, author and journalist based in Seattle, Washington. A retired field archaeologist and university lecturer, he has a background in the history of science, technology, and medicine with a particular emphasis on aerospace, military, and cybernetic subjects. In addition, he is the author of four award-winning plays, a novel, reviews, and a plethora of scholarly works ranging from industrial archaeology to law. David has worked as a feature writer for many international magazines and has been a feature writer for New Atlas since 2011.
7 comments
Derek Howe
Cool, how much are they!? ...asking for a friend.
CAVUMark
Clicked for a video, where's the video?
paul314
I want to see the interesting situation that would be this thing running flat out for a full hour. That would be a pie popping off the conveyor every 12 seconds which is just about enough time for a human to plate or box assuming nothing goes wrong. One misstep behind the counter or one customer taking an extra few seconds to make sure they got the right pie, and it things could start piling up in amusing ways. (Also, that would be a fridge with a couple hundred pounds of dough, a hundred pounds or more of cheese, 10-plus gallons of tomato sauce, another few hundred pounds of various meats and vegetable toppings...)
Wolf0579
paul413, Your comment brought forth memories of Lucille Ball and her sidekick in the chocolate factory.

I had a good laugh at the thought! But a CES show in Las Vegas should be able to provide enough demand, assuming the robot is making one kind of pie only. I will be looking for video of the robot in action... hint, hint, "new atlas"...(I still think the new name isn't the right fit... you should have paid for TWO focus groups.)
Username
paul314 - there's an I Love Lucy episode depicting exactly that!
TFC
So if running full 24/7 and a family of four ordered a pizza once a week, one machine could supply a city of 200,000.
Expanded Viewpoint
No one says that the machine has to run flat out all of the time! I'm sure that if a buffer system was used, with each customer putting in their own order info, they could get a number at time of payment and the computer would be able to put the requested toppings on it and then a number tag laid on top after baking the pie. Then each customer could select their pie out of a conveyor like at an airport.
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