“The AI ’Hamburger Patty’ robot is a tool that goes beyond solving the labor shortage problem and helps the ‘hamburger ecosystem’. We’ll do our greatest to expand our business to benefit from the characteristics of AI, which improves performance with more data because the variety of installations increases.”
Enia (CEO Hwang Geon-pil), which had been specializing in developing hardware-centric ‘kitchen robots’, has been drastically expanding its artificial intelligence (AI) workforce since last yr.
We’re specializing in technological advancements corresponding to cloud-based data collection, vision AI, and interface (UI) construction. The last word strategy is to create a ‘cooking robot integrated cloud service’ by combining AI and robots.
Eniai was founded in 2020 with the goal of developing a kitchen robot that may handle the complete hamburger cooking process. The ‘Alpha Grill’, which was first introduced last yr, is a specialized robot that focuses on grilling patties.
Jimin Soo, CTO of Enia, said, “Even grilling a patty requires more advanced calculations and technology than you may think,” and added, “While the complete development process was taking an extended time, we ended up introducing the patty robot first.”
Patty baking can be an enormous problem for actual business owners. It’s difficult and dangerous, so finding people is like trying to search out a needle in a haystack. Especially for self-employed individuals who run a hand-crafted burger shop, it’s an issue that may determine whether or not they’ll run the shop.
CTO Ji explained, “For Patty staff, it is so dangerous that they’ve loads of burn marks on their arms,” and “It is a difficult task that ought to be handled by seniors slightly than recent employees.” It requires expert staff, but it surely’s even harder to fill the positions because there are lots of early dropouts.
Due to this fact, Patty Robot is an answer that may improve the working environment and food quality of the complete ‘hamburger ecosystem’ beyond stores or franchises. Nevertheless, the prototype Alpha Grill had limitations since it didn’t have an information collection stage. AI and software development were also unavoidable processes.
CTO Ji said, “We now have a structure that permits real-time understanding and accumulation by judging the cooking of the patty, etc. with vision AI and transmitting the data to the cloud.” He added, “We now have also installed a touchscreen in order that users can select specific options or recipes, corresponding to patty thickness and shape.”
It is simple to grasp when you watch the video. All people do is ‘touch screen operation’ and ‘put the patty on’. All cooking situations and data are sent to the cloud.
Specifically, the introduction of AI can significantly improve the cooking system. The primary is to resolve the unevenness of the patty. Although the hamburger patty is an irregular material that mixes various ingredients corresponding to meat and vegetables, there are almost no cases where there may be a noticeable unevenness within the manufacturing or quantitative points. Slightly, ‘subtle unevenness in taste’ occurs depending on the degree of warmth preservation or thawing through the storage or distribution stage.
Presently, people cannot detect subtle differences, in order that they all cook at the identical time and baking, but when AI is introduced, the temperature and baking degree could be calculated accurately. “Cooking is a field of intuition and experience, so the skilled knowledge of business owners is essential,” he explained, adding, “Should you add AI to this, it’ll create a synergy effect.”
The second is the issue of real-time fault detection and control. If data is collected using AI and sent to the cloud, Enia can check in real time. Within the case of existing cooking appliances or robots, it’s difficult to quickly discover when a fault occurs, and on-site repair was the one solution. Nevertheless, if AI and cloud systems are combined, it’s explained that it is feasible to detect abnormalities and remotely control or repair them.
We put loads of effort into the software development process. We secured a complete of 140,000 patty data using actual patty shooting and virtual data augmentation, and trained the model. We also greatly increased our workforce. The corporate, which was around 20 people at the tip of last yr, has now expanded to 40 people. We now have ▲machine control firmware ▲cloud service development (backend, front, designer) ▲data scientists, engineers, etc., and are within the strategy of hiring more.
He has technical differences, having experienced each early hardware-centered development and up to date software-centered development. CTO Jimin Su can be a software engineer, but he said that after joining Enia, he gained loads of experience within the hardware field.
Based on this, following the ‘Alpha Grill’, the modular ‘Alpha Kitchen’ prototype, a robot that cooks the complete hamburger process, is scheduled to be unveiled at the tip of 2025. The strategy is to mix this with the ‘Alpha Cloud’ software to maneuver forward with an integrated cloud kitchen service.
CTO Ji expressed confidence, saying, “Identical to the kitchen robot for frying, Eniai will have the opportunity to advance to the subsequent level within the hamburger patty field.”
After all, he said, “It’s far more difficult than you’re thinking that for hardware to achieve high reliability out there, and it is just not technically easy to realize high robustness and accuracy enough for self-employed people to spend loads of money to adopt robots.”
But to this point, the feedback has been “incredibly positive,” he said. Now, individuals are reaching out to him in areas beyond patties, corresponding to steak, pork belly, and squid sundae, saying, “We wish to try it out.” He can be discussing collaboration with two large global franchises under an NDA (nondisclosure agreement).
“Introducing robots into the actual market is like constructing a platform,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s software that gives technological added value. We’ll proceed to work on improving the interface with AI.”
He continued, “Many individuals ask if we’re working with McDonald’s, but when you’ve contact information, we would love to find out about it too,” he said with fun.
Reporter Jang Se-min semim99@aitimes.com
