Technology Check

🤖 Rosa’s Blog — Lunch with a Robot

For my birthday, my uncle took me to a new café in Exeter called Byte. It’s famous for one thing: the waiters are robots.
When we arrived, there was nobody at the door — just a touchscreen. You choose a table, and then you order from the menu on a tablet. I ordered pasta and a mango smoothie. My uncle ordered a coffee and, for some reason, three desserts.
Ten minutes later, a robot rolled towards us. It was about as tall as me, with a round screen for a face. The face showed two big cartoon eyes, and they blinked. On its body there were three trays. It stopped next to our table and said, “Your food has arrived. Please take it.” Then it waited.
My uncle tried to give it a tip. It didn’t understand. It just said “Enjoy your meal!” again and rolled away.
The robots were good at some things. They never dropped a plate, and they didn’t get the orders wrong. However, they were bad at others. One robot kept bumping into a little boy’s chair, because he was swinging his legs. And when a woman asked one, “Is the soup spicy?”, it just blinked.
There were still humans working there: a chef in the kitchen and a woman who “helped the robots when they got confused”. She was the busiest person in the café.