It’s more a dishwasher level of automation than 3CPO- when you order they enter your table number and the kitchen staff puts the prepared dishes in the shelves in the robot, which the drives to your table. Once it gets there you take the dishes from the robot.
Tech-wise this could have existed 30 years ago (maybe going around the restaurant would have been more challenging than today but it’s a fixed path and the robots don’t leave the restaurant).
Often people will say "AI will never do X, or at least it will take decades", and then it does X, and it turns out you can cheat a lot to get X done really easily.
I'm old enough to remember when X was "play chess at top level", followed by 19 years of X = "play Go at top level". Irregardless of what you think of GenAI, the script writers of I, Robot chose X = "compose music and draw pictures".
I've seen robot waiters at one restaurant in SF as well, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were more. They'll most likely be here on a large scale faster than we think.
Wow. I genuinely didn't think robotic waiters would ever exist anytime soon.
> For physical retail, or home delivery?
I was thinking for physical retail. Thanks for the video link.