Robotics Making a Mark in the Hospitality Sector

Pouring and serving sparkling wine to students graduating from the Helsinki Culinary School, Perho is a tradition that started in 1935. In this environment of professional manners and linen cloths, the school in Finland encountered a twist in the events: a robot pouring the bubbly into fluted glasses.

Automation in the food and beverage industry is used to handle the dirty and dangerous harsh environments. Robots and sophisticated machine vision programs handle the heavy lifting and quality control during the packaging phase. Yet automation made its way into a world-renowned moment in hospitality.

A Welcome Partner

A robotic arm, made by ABB, gripped a wine bottle and precisely poured glass after glass of sparkling wine as seen in the video The Rise of Service Robotics.

Helsinki Culinary School students have graduated during wartime and economic booms and busts. They’ve encountered dramatic shifts in fashion and other cultural changes. Yet, a person always poured the wine, but the soft whirr of the motors in each axes of the robot marked another shift. Human-robot collaboration is possible even in a graduation ceremony from a culinary school.

More than 250,000 ABB robots have been installed around the world. Bringing automation into a time-honored event was novel, but it also shows how accepted robots are becoming, even ones that look like they belong in a manufacturing facility.

The robotic arm at the school was a resource, as mentioned in the video, to “help students master personal service skills” that have always been at the core of the school’s philosophy.

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The culinary students learned how to position the robot and program it so it hit its target each and every time. Materials handling was another lesson. Products don’t get much more fragile than a wine glass that doesn’t have any protective packaging around it.

Advances in end-of-arm tooling with force sensing make delicate touches possible. Innovations in this area of robotics is helping end users achieve more as noted in a previous blog post on A3automate.org, How End of Arm Tooling Gives Manufacturers a Competitive Edge.

Fragile items like glass vials and products that are hard to grip like men’s dress shirts can be picked up and sorted using the right gripper. Designs make using the tools easy.

A Welcome Teacher

The students discovered that even though they are heading into hospitality management or the kitchens of luxury cruise ships, they were still able to supervise the robot.

In the book, Machines of Loving Grace, author John Markoff introduces the idea in a chapter on collaboration that programming a robot could be considered a logical step beyond the use of computers and video games.

On page 195, Markoff recounts the 2012 introduction of Baxter, a humanoid-like robot made by Rethink Robots under the leadership of Rodney Brooks. “[Baxter] is one of the first examples…that personal computers are sprouting legs and beginning to move around in the environment.”

Maybe the use of a robotic arm isn’t such a cultural shift for culinary students in the 21st century. The robot can pour wine and thanks to the axes, offer a toast. ABB’s product not only gets the job done, but it also teaches manners.

Technological advances to use in business come from all over. See more by browsing the many free resources of A3.