PRE2020 3 Group3
Robots in Horeca
Group Members
| Name | Student ID | Department | Email address |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marvin Thüne | student id | Applied physics | m.p.thune@student.tue.nl |
| Isidoros Kotinis | 1286692 | Applied physics | i.n.k.kotinis@student.tue.nl |
| Lotte van Megen | 1453092 | Psychology and Techonology | l.m.v.megen@student.tue.nl |
Introduction
Everyone is missing the horeca during these corona times. All the hotels, restaurants, and bars have been closed for quite some time now. And of course, we are all missing it and would like to go back rather sooner than later. We would all like to enjoy the warm weather again while drinking a beer at an outdoor cafe.
So did we, and that is how we discovered Horeca robots. As everyone was trying to find solutions to open their restaurants safely again some people had tried using these robots. It seemed quite promising at first but it turned out that most robots weren’t developed enough for this work yet. Serving went quite slow and the whole system wasn’t very efficient yet. It turned out that there were still enough points that needed improvement before a restaurant could be run mostly by robots. Seeing the robots still had so many points of improvement we set this as our challenge: how can we improve these robots and most importantly their efficiency so they can properly work for a restaurant?
To discover the specific problems with these robots we had to find a stakeholder, someone who already worked and experimented with them. An interview with this stakeholder would give us more information about the different problems and how we could help to improve the robots. Our main stakeholder became Dadawan, after an interview with them about all the problems they had encountered we conducted an experiment that would help in solving some of their problems. Additional to the results of this experiment we will also give some further solutions and suggestions on how the robots could function better. Unfortunately, we didn't find a solution to open the horeca again, but who knows what will happen in the future. Maybe the next time we enjoy a beer on the terrace, it will be served by a horeca robot.
Problem statement and objective
At the beginning of this project we had different ideas on what we wanted to contribute to these existing horeca robots. The ideas below were our options after our state of the art research.
To analyze and plan the introduction of service robotics in horeca. We now have three options, after more research and interviews with the stakeholders, we will decide what will be the best route and which project has the most potential.
1. Design a specific situation where robots make it possible to open up Horeca that is hygienic enough to be able to open up during a pandemic. Robots will minimize the customer-staff proximity in the horeca.
2. Look at existing server robots in restaurants and try to improve their customer friendliness by improving their interaction with people and modifying their appearance. Mostly look at server robots, not the ones in the kitchen. Analyze which properties the robots should have.
3. Design a robot that helps people with a disability (or people that are forced to isolate due to medical reasons) to do work in a restaurant by letting them remotely control robots that walk around in the restaurant.
After some more research and an interview with stakeholders we have a better idea of how well the robots function and what needs more attention and what not. After that additional research we made a final decision to focus on improving the efficiency and pace of the robots. That is why, for this project we will look at the maximum speeds of the robot, and also conduct an experiment to see if the current speed could be improved. The objective is to let the robots go faster without causing more problems on other aspects like the emergency stop. Next to the speed improvement we also want to come up with additional suggestions and solutions on how to make the robots more efficient.
USE
- User
The main users are the staff of the restaurant, as the robots are mainly there to assist them. They can assist staff by taking over some load of bringing the meals and (hopefully) drinks to the tables. The staff will be relieved from some of the physical work and it will also allow them to spend more time interacting with the customers.
- Society
Implementing robots into horeca can have a great impact on society. They are already widely being used in several asian metropolises. The question is if this trend will also reach us and if it does, what it will mean for us. Of course it will have an impact on the jobs in the horeca, will the employees be replaced by robots or will they only get more assistance. It could also be possible that their normal tasks shift to new ones, the focus might shift from serving the food to customer interaction for example. There is currently a shortage of human employees in the horeca so the robots might also form a solution to that. https://wnl.tv/2020/01/13/einde-groei-horeca-in-zicht-door-personeelstekort-en-nieuwe-regels-het-wordt-onnodig-veel-duurder/ As mentioned before, the robots might also get developed enough so they can be the solution to any epidemic or pandemic equivalent of COVID-19.
- Enterprise
Right now the robots are mainly used as a marketing trick to attract guests. They are not very profitable yet. But maybe in the future when they are further developed they become more profitable and they can help to boost the efficiency of the horeca.
The needs and requirements of the stakeholder will be further discussed later in the report.
State-of-the-art
For this research, we were looking for different types of robots that already exist and work in the horeca. When looking for robots we discovered that they could be categorized into roughly two types. Firstly the server tray robots, these robots have a purely functional form, the interaction with humans demands a lot of action from the user. The second type looks more humanoid, these robots interact more with the users and look and act more like humans. We did some research on different types of robots and the way they work. They are stated below.
Server tray robots
LG CLOi ServeBot
Type/purpose Serves drinks and small snacks Moving vending machine Very limited personal interaction with the customer
Pros
Large storage -> does not need to be refilled/pickup orders often
Quite robust
Relatively large wheelbase compared to the height
Cons
Needs big open space e.g. casinos, events, convention
A limited selection of products
A large amount of customer effort required
Coronavirus application Limits interaction between cashiers and customers. But bigger conventions are probably not realistic during a pandemic. Thus partly defeating the advantage of using this type of serving robot as a precautionary measure to limit the exposure of staff and customers.
Application after pandemic ends Convenient for some customers that happen to be thirsty or a bit hungry when they spot the bot moving about. Basically, a moving vending machine and might for this reason be economically viable.
LG CLOi ServBot
Type/purpose Moving serving tray Brings orders from the kitchen to customers at the table
Pros Limit exposure of staff to customers Customers can sit at the table and not wait in line with other customers Some personal interaction with customer possible through the screen/speakers Food is ready to be consumed right away
Cons
Needs flat unobstructed space to operate
Some customer effort required -> standing up and taking food from tray
Food is exposed -> losing heat
Potentially limiting the number of orders this type of robot can deliver in a single go without food getting cold
Food on plates limits the acceleration/deceleration potential before food might be displaced
Coronavirus application Useful to limit customer and staff interaction at a fastfood/large open restaurants. If combined with an app customers could go straight to the table to limit their exposure to other people.
Application after pandemic ends Reduces the amount of staff needed at a big-open/fastfood restaurant. Therefore potentially economically viable.
Starship
Type/purpose Food delivery robot Brings orders from a kitchen to customers at a specific location. (Table/home/park etc.)
Pros Limit exposure of staff to customers Customers can sit at table and not wait in line with other customers Or stay at home/in the park etc Food is insulated -> food stays warm for longer Allowing for larger travel distances Robust -> does not tip over easily Low center of mass Large wheelbase compared to height High speed potential
Cons Needs flat unobstructed space to operate Some customer effort required Standing up and taking food from inventory Food in bag so not ready to eat right away Low to the ground -> hard to spot If operating outside, the environment is far less predictable Potentially inconvenient to other users of the infrastructure
Coronavirus application Useful to limit customer and staff interaction at a fastfood/large open restaurants. If combined with an app customers could go straight to the table to limit their exposure to other people. Even staying at home which would be the ideal during a pandemic.
Application after pandemic ends Reduces the amount of staff needed at a big-open/fastfood restaurant. Therefore potentially economically viable. Could potentially replace the current food delivery system.
Bear
The bear robot belongs to the category of server tray robots. There are two different types, Servi and Mini-Servi. They both have 3 levels with plates which can carry different things like drinks and food. The Servi is meant for restaurants and the Mini-Servi is a better fit in bars and for serving drinks. They are easy to install and multiple robots can be used at once. The robot can be controlled with the attached touchscreen or with an external tablet. There is also the option to look at the analytics to monitor and improve the robot. Both robots weigh 33 kg and can carry 30 kg and their battery works for 8 up to 12 hours. The only big difference between them is the dimensions (https://www.bearrobotics.ai/products/index.html).
Humanoid robots
Dadawan
One restaurant in the Netherlands seems to stand out the most when it comes to applying robots in their restaurant. This restaurant is named Dadawan and they already tested out three different robots. One for welcoming guests and two different types of robots for serving trays. They also did some experiments with the robots to see if they could make their restaurant coronaproof (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4k-R5WMmhs,).
Guest are welcomed by a little robot named Jamie that will take their temperature, if their temperature is normal the people can follow the robots to their seats. They have to order their food online via an app and a bigger robot named Amy will then bring the trays with food to their table. Guests have to take the plates from the tray themselves. Not all the work is done by the robots, they mostly do the logistic work. There are still employees walking around, they can now focus on other work and help the guest with different requests. The last robot is Akatar, this robot helps with cleaning everything up. The employees have to place the trays on the robot and the robot will then take everything to the kitchen. (https://www.hartvannederland.nl/nieuws/bediening-robots-restaurant-maastricht).
Both the people from Dadawan and their guests keep emphasizing that the robots really enhance the experience of eating out. The owner of the restaurant, Danny Deng, keeps emphasizing that the robots are not a replacement of his employees but are there to help them. The robots also help to increase customer friendliness according to him because his normal employees now have more time for the guests. Furthermore, they also help with saving time. The robots come with a standard software package but Danny Deng still has some programmers working for him to optimize the program and to implement the floor plan of the restaurant into the robot. Danny Deng also states he has bigger plans and wants to open a restaurant that is fully operated by robots. (https://www.missethoreca.nl/restaurant/artikel/2020/05/horeca-robotica-robots-moeten-gastvrijheid-dadawan-verhogen-101336132?_ga=2.170190368.1208467789.1613485759-24978766.1613485759)
Interview with Dadawan
To get to know more about the specific problems that come with implementing robots into a restaurant we held an interview with an important stakeholder. This stakeholder is Paul Seijben, he works for the restaurant Dadawan. Dadawan was one of the first restaurants that actively used robots in their restaurants, they are now one of the frontrunners in this field in the Netherlands. Dadawan imports the robots from a factory in China so they dont know all the technical details about the robots but they have worked and experimented with them for some time now.
Our goal for this interview was to discover if there were any big problems that they encountered while using these robots and if we could maybe come up with solutions or suggestions for them. The conducted interview is written out down below, the answers are not quotes but globally what he told us. The points that we got out of it will be discussed in the next section.
Q: What made you decide to work with robots? What was your motive?
A: Danny (the owner) traveled to China a lot and discovered these robots. In China, way more restaurants use these robots already. He contacted the factory and imported a few robots straight away. The main reason why we wanted to implement these robots in the restaurants was to help our employees, they have to work with very heavy plates so using these robots could make carrying them easier.
Q: Does the robot meet your expectations?
A: It was harder than we initially thought to implement these robots in our restaurant. The suppliers always tell you the best points only of course. Especially the mapping and programming. We even hired a freelancer to help us with programming the robot. The robot Jamy also didn’t work for us, the whole process of bringing people to their tables and taking their temperature took way too long for when it is busy. Taking the temperature also didn’t work once there were people standing behind them.
Q: You now have two robots in use, Amy and Dexter, what are your experiences with them?
A: Amy looks more human and is more interesting to our guests. We see that this especially works well for marketing and on things like social media. Amy is less functional than Dexter but Dexter gets less attention from the guests. The efficiency could still improve for both of them, together with their navigation. They are still quite slow and walk around very rigidly, we would like to see them more flexible in the future. The biggest problem was that they are unable to communicate, so to avoid collisions we could only send out one robot at a time.
Q: How do you set up the robot? Is it all ready when it arrives?
A: We expected it to be easier to set up the robot but it turns out that the mapping of the restaurant is quite hard still and we still had to program a lot of things ourselves. It would also be easier to implement them into a restaurant that was designed for robots, we now had some extra challenges because of this. Asking the supplier about our problems was also quite hard because of the language barrier.
Q: What would you like to see improved about the robots, what are the points of improvement? A: It would be nice to see them improve on navigation as I said before. We also contacted the factory because we would like to have the option to control the robots from something like an apple watch. Right now our servers have to walk to the robot or the kitchen to give it its orders. It would be nice if we could do this without having to walk back every time. Because we have these heavy plates it would be great if these robots would follow us with the plates. This way we don’t have to walk back to the kitchen 4 times if we have an order for 8 people, we could just take all these plates to the table at once. It would also be nice if the implementation of the rootings would be made easier, right now we had to hire a programmer to do this for us.
Q: What is the main point of added value these robots bring you?
A: Amy works well for marketing especially. Right now they only cost us money and our employees don’t really trust them yet and are hesitant to work with them. But we want to keep working with them and keep improving their efficiency.
Q: Would you see options to use these robots during the pandemic?
A: we did some experiments with them and they worked quite well, the only downside was that our hospitality goes down if guests’ only interaction is with robots. We think people would agree to this during the pandemic but it has no further future after that for us.
Q: How did your employees find working with these robots?
A: At first they were really hesitant. Most horeca employees aren’t really technical, they just want to work with people. This bumped a bit at the beginning but we think that once our employees trust the robot more than the collaboration will improve a lot. Our employees should be able to trust the robot to do its tasks and do them well.
Q: What is the reaction of the guests when they see your robots?
A: They mostly find it interesting to see how it works. Right now we don’t see these robots as replacements for our employees they just add something interesting to the restaurant. The reactions online can sometimes be negative, people say this is absurd and that our hospitality suffers from these robots.
Q: What is your ultimate goal with these robots?
A: I am a bit more skeptical than Danny. We just want to experiment with this product, but we also depend on the technical world. As long as these robots don’t really work like we would like them to it is hard for us to implement them into our restaurant of course. We can only keep trying and investing in them and hope for the best. in the end, we hope to have 3 robots per restaurant to help our employees. This would also require more trust in these robots from our employees.
interview with programmer
Approach, milestones and deliverables
The first plan was to work on the interface for the interaction between robot and human. The goal was to make it possible to control the robot for as many people as possible.
Below are the different focus points in this robot-human interaction:
- Robot design
- Requirements on design
- Make a simulation about how it should look and work
- Make a concept of the design (supported by psychology research on how people react to certain features)
- Flowchart for robot decision-making?
- Pathfinding
- To minimize interaction needed with the controler
- Table management, optimize the routes it takes
- Interface
- With the customer
- In the kitchen
- Work with (disabled) operator
- Serving mechanism
- What to say and do
- Should the robot be able to serve or only bring the meals to the table
We will also be looking for other aspects of these robots that may cause problems, this will be done by talking with a stakeholder like Dadawan (who already uses these types of robots in their restaurant). If clear problems should arise we will focus on that part of the robot and try to come up with solutions to solve this problem.
After talking with the stakeholders and figuring out their problems with the robot, the focus of the deliverables shifted to other points. The main problems of the stakeholders will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter. For this research, only one problem was chosen to put further focus on. It turns out that the robots can be quite slow sometimes, although improvements have been made with the latest version. So for this report, we will also assume that the robots will eventually be able to move faster. This assumption is based on the fact that the technology is improving really fast because it is still a young and new field.
Our stakeholder Dadawan told us that they would like to see the robots move as fast as their servers so they can walk behind them with the heavy plates. So we will take this problem assuming that the robots will be able to walk as fast as the servers in the near future. One problem that arises if the robot should move fast is that the glasses and plates may move when it needs to make an emergency stop. To avoid this from happening we will conduct an experiment. The goal of the experiment is to conclude what the maximum speed and deceleration should be for the robot if it makes an emergency stop. The results of the experiment will be shown and in addition to the maximum speed and deceleration different further recommendations to avoid the tableware from falling of the tray will be made. The results will finally be discussed and shown. In the end, we will look at what would happen if the results were applied to the current robot and if the maximum speed and deceleration could be applicable in a realistic way.
The deliverables will be the results of the experiment and a simulation of how it would go if the maximum speeds would be applied to the robots.
Stakeholders
Provisional problem statement: How can you implement server robots in a restaurant in an appropriate way and how can they help with opening horeca during corona times?
We will get in contact with an important stakeholder: Danny Deng, the founder of Dadawan. We will ask them different questions about certain topics like navigation, interaction with people, the ordering system, serving of food, privacy and corona.
The questions will be about different topics, those topics are:
- Navigation
- Interaction between the robot and human
- Ordering system
- Serving of food
- Privacy
- Corona
The experiment
Experimental Setup
Let’s have a look at how we can simulate the acceleration needed to stop the robot on time.
Assume we have a robot moving with speed [math]\displaystyle{ \vec{v} }[/math] inside our restaurant assisting our waiters in carrying the food and drinks. Suddenly a kid unexpectedly jumps in front of the robot; immediately the robot senses that movement through the sensors now it needs to decelerate in time.
Unfortunately is fully loaded, breaking with its maximum force will cause the food and drinks to spill, this will cause not only the spilling of food but also a lot of mess since the robot itself and the restaurant floors will need to be cleaned. As it has become clear this is something that we would like to avoid, so people can receive their orders on time and waiters can continue with serving the customers instead of cleaning.
To achieve this we want to test which accelerations different dishes allow us to break with. Knowing the acceleration and the range our sensors read at we can decide the maximum speeds the robots should use for different drinks and food. This way it will not be overprotective slow in cases the dishes can take a harsher stop.
The simulation
Our focus lays on what is happening to the trays and more specifically on them; Let’s have a look! Since the trays are attached to the robot they will uniformly move with the same speed [math]\displaystyle{ \vec{v} }[/math]
Method
Results
Conclusion
Discussion
Additional solutions/suggestions
When the robot needs to make an emergency stop, the plates and glasses will experience a sudden force and may tilt or even fall down. In the experiment above we discussed what the maximum deceleration of this emergency stop should be where the tableware would still stand up and nothing would move too much or break.
In this experiment the types of tableware and types of underground where they were standing on varied. The maximum decelerations where no tupperware would fall or break were measured for each situation.
But apart from alternating the underground and the type of tupperware there are more ways to increase the maximum deceleration. Some recommendations on how to improve the stability of the tableware on the trays will be given below. These suggestions are not tested as thoroughly as done in the experiment above but still seem quite promising in solving the problem. They are meant as an add on to the solutions given by the experiment.
Application
Planning
| Week | Planning |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | Come up with different ideas |
| Week 2 | Look up some research papers and try to find a specific topic to focus on |
| Carnival break | Come up with plan for this project |
| Week 3 | Work out the plan and search for stakeholders |
| Week 4 1 - 7 March | Hold interview with stakeholder which will give more answers and show us what the greatest problems are |
| Week 5 8 - 14 March | Work on deliverable, do research and try to find ways to make it possible, look for ways to setup the experiment |
| Week 6 15 - 27 March | Do the experiment |
| Week 7 22 - 28 March | Work out the experiment and work on calculations |
| Week 8 29 March - 4 April | Work on the report, final presentation (video or online) |
Logbook
| student | Task | Time spend |
|---|---|---|
| Together | Had lecture and tutorial, began to look for groups to join | 3 h |
| student | Task | Time spend |
|---|---|---|
| Together | Had a meeting with the group did a brainstorm, thought about interesting topics, had an introductory meeting with our tutor about topics we were interested in | 1.5 h, 0.5 h |
| student | Task | Time spend |
|---|---|---|
| Isidoros |
State of the art research and furthermore looking into how we could improve the existing robots in the HORECA field. Also had a look at what measures “koninklijk horeca nederland” think are necessary to reopen restaurants during the pandemic. |
2h, 1.5h, 1h |
| Marvin | ||
| Lotte | Introduction research about the state of the art + researching specific topics like navigation systems, look at examples of Horeca robots, write work down in docs | 3h, 2h, 1h |
| Together | Three meetings discussing the research we did about the state of the art, and trying to come up with plans. Write approach, problem statement and objectives together.
Also working on the wiki. |
0.5 h, 2.5 h, 1.5 h |
| student | Task | Time spend |
|---|---|---|
| Isidoros | Looked up robots and specifications: Amy & DEXTER
Prepared the meeting with the brand manager of DADAWAN, did some research on their current robots, and thought of some questions to ask about the technical aspects. |
1h, 1.5h |
| Marvin | Worked on the questions for the interview | |
| Lotte | Work on wiki put everything in a clear order, type out the results of the state of the art research that was found, send email to Dadawan (stakeholder), prepare for meeting with brand manager, did research after Dadawan | 3h, 0,5 h, 0,5 h, 1h |
| Together | Meetings, tutor meeting | 2h, 1h, 0.5 h |
| student | Task | Time spend |
|---|---|---|
| Isidoros | From the interviews: organise the requirements and sectors that have problems and how they can be improved (possible solutions).
Early version of the one solution. |
1.5h |
| Marvin | Fill in log book, experiments and solutions for speed/efficiency vs dish/drink stability | |
| Lotte | Put planning and logbook in wiki, type out the answers for the interview and put them in the wiki, worked on the preparation of the interview and on the results of it. | 2h, 2h, 1h |
| Together | Meeting with stakeholder + two group meetings, meeting with tutor | 2h, 1h, 1h, 0.5 h |
| student | Task | Time spend |
|---|---|---|
| Isidoros | Work on what looks to be the solution to improve the efficiency of the robots: Looking at how we can simulate an accident in our own experimental setup. | 2.5h |
| Marvin | ||
| Lotte | Search for good glasses to use and get things from the store for the experiment, update approach part in the wiki, think about the further recommendations | 1h, 0.5 h, 1.5 h |
| Together | Meetings (online and offline), prepare for the experiment, mail stakeholder, update the planning, meeting with tutor | 1 h, 0.5 h, 0.5 h, 4 h (per meeting), 0.5 h |
| student | Task | Time spend |
|---|---|---|
| Isidoros | Work on the Experimental Setup and Example of display | 4 h |
| Marvin | ||
| Lotte | write out all the suggestions and do research after them, prepare for the experiment, write analyzation of the Dadawan interview with current problems and our suggestions to solve them | 2.5 h, 0.5 h, 2 h |
| Together | Conduct experiment, meeting where we discussed the results, meeting with tutor | 5 h, 1.5 h, 0.5 h |
| student | Task | Time spend |
|---|---|---|
| Isidoros | Organise the docs document. Finish Example of strategies of communication between kitchen and waiters. Make the video for the presentation. | 0.5, 4h, 1h |
| Marvin | ||
| Lotte | make setup of presentation make a layout and make sure all things are included in a logical order, finish writing and researching further suggestions, write parts of the presentation, write experiment method and make sure it all fits with each other and there is no overlap, make sure the document layout is clear, | 2 h, 1 h, 1 h, 2 h, 0.5 h |
| Together | Offline meeting where we analyzed our results and divided the work to do, also divided the presentation | 4 h, |
| student | Task | Time spend |
|---|---|---|
| Isidoros | ||
| Marvin | ||
| Lotte | ||
| Together |