At a Tokyo cafe, with only a few employees and the capacity to accommodate 162 customers, robots, not people, are the ones taking orders and serving meals.
Pepper Parlor, a cafe in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, has a special kind of robot called Servi that runs automatically and passes through the seating areas to serve drinks and meals to customers.
Servi uses a 3D camera and laser to detect obstacles and steps, and when someone is in its path, it simply pauses. The humanoid robots called Pepper take orders from customers.
Softbank Robotics Corp., a Tokyo-based company that sells these robots, has been receiving many inquiries, mainly from restaurant chains, according to the company.
This kind of service, in which restaurant employees and customers do not need to interact with each other, is growing to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus and to solve labor shortages. It is also likely to become a new part of everyday life.
Captions
1-3: A customer receives a meal from Servi, a robot to serve customers, at a cafe in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, on Nov. 10.
4, 5: A robot called Servi delivers meals ordered by customers to their seats at a cafe in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, on Nov. 10.
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
