Robots employed to take orders and greet customers at Pizza Hut

Pepper—a humanoid robotwith a sophisticated vision system designed to live with people and react to them on an emotional level in multiple languages—has been deployed by Pizza Hut restaurants in Asia to greet and interact with customers, as well as take food orders.

Developed by Aldebaran, which is part of the SoftBank Robotic Holdings Group, Pepper is designed to help people grow, enhance their life, facilitate relationships, and connect them with the outside world. One such example is when Pepper was deployedby European travel company Costa Cruises to greet cruisers, assist passengers, and help them navigate the ship.

The vision-guided robot’s head is equipped with four microphones, two HD RGB cameras (in the mouth and forehead) and a 3D camerabehind the eyes. It also has a gyroscope in the torso and touch sensors in the head and heads. Pepper’s mobile base has two sonars, six lasers, three bumper sensors, and a gyro. Images are processed by shape recognition software capable of identifying faces and objects.

As a result of a collaboration with MasterCard, Pepper will be used in Pizza Hut restaurants in Asia. Pepper’ chest features a digital tablet which will show menu options. In order to interact with Pepper, customers must have a MasterPass account on their phones. By tapping the Pepper icon on their phone or by scanning a QR code on the robot’s tablet, customers can use the robot to order and pay for food.

Pizza Hut executives said that Pepper will make it easier for people to customize order and will speed up customer service.

"We are excited to welcome Pepper to the Pizza Hut family," said Vipul Chawla, managing director of Pizza Hut Restaurants Asia in a press release. "Core to our digital transformation journey is the ability to make it easier for customers to engage, connect and transact with Pizza Hut. With an order-and-payment-enabled Pepper, customers can now come to expect personalized ordering at our stores, reduce wait time for carryout, and have a fun, frictionless user experience."

Former McDonalds USA CEO Ed Rensi, however, issued a warning about the impact on jobs that using robots in fast food restaurants and beyond would present during an interview on the FOX business Network.

"I was at the National Restaurant Show yesterday and if you look at the robotic devices that are coming into the restaurant industry -- it’s cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who’s inefficient making $15 an hour bagging French fries -- it’s nonsense and it’s very destructive and it’s inflationary and it’s going to cause a job loss across this country like you’re not going to believe," he said.

View the MasterCard press release.

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