It is a universal truth that all of us foodies are wistfully longing for the day when we can get back to devouring our favourite food at our most loved restaurant, without having the constant worry of the virus nagging us. And this restaurant in Netherlands has caught our thoughts!
Featuring the possible future of dining – Dadawan Restaurant, Netherlands
Restaurants and bars started operating from June 1st in The Netherlands. However, of course, there was an inherent air of caution lingering around, with people highly skeptical about dining out. To address these concerns, a Dutch restaurant has brought in robots, that will not only be the waiter, but will also ensure that social distancing norms are followed.
Dadawan robots.Photo by Frank Kerbusch/BSR Agency/Getty Images
This segregation of duties in this restaurant is strictly defined too, with different robots being ‘employed’ for different tasks.
Upon stepping into the restaurant, you will be greeted by the welcome robot. After the welcome gesture, this robot gets to business by taking your temperature. Only if you pass the temperature test, our welcome guy gives you a nod!
Congratulations if you’ve passed your first test! Now, the next ‘employee’ guides you inside and takes you to your assigned seat. Upon getting seated, our mechanical waiter promptly arrives, to take your orders. The food after preparation is served by the bots too, thereby completely cutting out interaction with any non-android! Yes introverts, I can see your sly smiles of relief!
These robots are called 'cobots', as they have the capability of working alongside humans, assisting them in tasks that were previously unimagined, for anyone other than mortal beings to perform.
While all this seems pretty cool, like the sci-fi movies that have always kept us entertained, it does raise some serious speculation about automation, in almost every sphere of life. The droids taking over does provide us hassle free ways to dine but we do know the cost it comes with – the deprivation of jobs. The restaurant workforce makes up almost 10% of the overall US workforce! Hence, it wouldn’t be difficult to imagine the number of people that would be rendered jobless, if the trend takes over.
However, one could argue that this is similar to the scenario before the advent of computers. Scores of manual jobs got digitized and left the world in a frenzy of digital revolution. Human beings are archetypes of survival of the fittest and are self-reliant, with an incredible ability to adapt. The argument could culminate with the point that maybe it is time for all of us to pick up some digital skills and make the landscape shift from jobs that require manual effort to jobs that require digital skills.
Further, there are talks of introducing cobots that not only take care of the manual, repetitive jobs, but can try their hand at cooking as well. If a chef rat dishing out palatable delicacies seemed startling, imagine a machine doing the same. They can be programmed to replicate food with exact accuracy as the real chef, but can mechanical food with the same ingredient composition every time really satiate our taste buds?
Can AI really replace human emotions? From something as simple as a warm smile of a waiter as we enter the restaurant to the satisfaction of tipping the waiters generously if we liked the service, the entire scenario would be upended, and this indeed would be a drastic change!
What is your take on this? Let us know in the comments below!