Hacker News Reader

Comment by cnst | Hacker News Reader

> Compare random frozen pizza machine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7anib2L7uUk with the hilarity that is Zume https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFSdxwRVh8A

Thanks for the links. Indeed, hilarious to watch it side-by-side for some extra entertainment! With the volume of pizza they're making in that Zume factory, it doesn't seem like there's even any extra benefits of using robots — and these robots seem to be placed there more as an obstacle to overcome than actual help; also, they didn't even use it for cheese dispersement, which was still done by hand? LOL, robots-made pizza!

View on HN

The automation in that video seems less than helpful, all the labor-intensive steps are being done by the humans, all the super easy stuff done by robot.

The six-axis robot being used to move a pizza 2 feet was pretty amazing -- I have to imagine they had grander plans but had no idea how to utilize it yet.

The mobile ovens are kind of absurd. I mean, warming it doesn't seem like a bad idea. Maybe even baking it on the way is fine (so long as all the toppings didn't slide off), but what do they need 56 bays for? If they're planning on loading up 56 pizzas and baking them on the way, latency on orders will be horrible. Huge orders are like, 10 pizzas. Seems like if they just baked them and stuffed them right into a warming compartment that'd be more than sufficient.

>The automation in that video seems less than helpful, all the labor-intensive steps are being done by the humans

The saucing of the dough in particular was absolutely slower than a reasonably experienced human worker. For a human worker in a typical pizzeria, the sauce takes two seconds.

I know that with repetition comes this kind of effeciency, but that's amazing to me, because when I make pizza it still takes me, like 45 seconds to really get it done...

You can see how quick they move in a typical pizzeria right at the beginning of this video. They are slinging sauce so fast, I wouldn't doubt it is about 2 seconds.

https://youtu.be/IugcIAAZJ2M

I noticed the same thing! They just needed to move the pizza across a 90 degree angle so they used a robot arm? Why not just rearrange the conveyor belt a bit?

You want to be able to say you use $COOL_TECHNOLOGY, so you use it to move a pizza two feet and do all the actual work the traditional way. It's like AI or blockchain, but for pizza.

Awesome summary, we do noodle robots. Next time someone asks me, I'm just going to say It's like AI or blockchain, but for noodles.

The robot is incredibly over-sized and under-utilized for this task and costs what you would pay for 5 employees in a year - not the best application. If the robot isn't tossing the pizza dough, then who cares haha!

Maintenance on this robot itself probably costs more than a person who would do its job.

That robot is what someone like me would get with an unlimited budget and little oversight from leadership.

Useless in this application, but a lot of fun for an engineer to play with.

If you must, then do it right! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxbjZiKAZP4

>it doesn't seem like there's even any extra benefits of using robots

you mean other than the $375M you can walk away with by claiming you're using robots to make pizza.

Well, you can't exactly walk away with that money. You are spending it on robots and expensive expertise to program those robots.

That's why you cut a deal with the person that sells you the robots.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com