Sam And Cat Robot Restaurant Open For Business
Pic shows: This restaurant has robot as waiters.
A Chinese restaurant owner inspired by the restaurant Bots from the hit US show Sam and Cat has created a restaurant filled with robots.
The robot restaurant on the TV show features robot waiters like Tandy and Bungle, and now a restaurant in Ningpo, a seaport city in north-eastern China's Zhejiang province, has also taken on robot staff.
Although wages for the robots in the city's Liancheng shopping mall are non-existent, they still do not come cheap at around 6,000 GBP each. But with a five-year-warranty on each robot, and the fact that they only need to be charged four-hours-a-day, the owner Lu Dike, 48, reckons in the long-term it is going to save a fortune on wage bills.
And the robots have not just been popular with fans of the US series, but also with people who have not even seen the show and want to experience being serviced by robot staff.
The "waiters" navigate their way around with the use of an optical sensing system, enabling them to independently serve food to any table within the restaurant. Additionally, the robots have the capability to speak up to 40 phrases in Mandarin Chinese, such as "enjoy your meal".
And restaurant owner Dike is even being pressured now to put the robots on sale for people to take home.
He said: "I get asked at least once a day if I'm prepared to sell one of them, who knows, maybe it might be a good sideline."
One of those who wants to buy one was customer Xu Yuan, 34, who said: "I really like the service and I think I would really like one at home, my son has been pestering me ever since we came here for a snack after a trip to the movies."
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