|
|
Robotics Institute
Seminar, September 3
Time
and Place | Seminar Abstract | Speaker
Biography | Speaker Appointments
Robotic Adventures in Fast Food
|
Time and Place |
Mauldin Auditorium (NSH 1305)
Refreshments 3:15 pm
Talk 3:30 pm
What’s
so interesting about flipping burgers?
Robotics
and automation have practically passed by the quick-service restaurant industry
despite the fact that restaurant kitchens are one of the most highly standardized,
process-driven production environments in the world. As a result, the
quick-service restaurant industry remains the last $100BB+ per year industry
that still manufactures its products by hand.
Three
former RI scientists set out to transform this industry, by applying so-called
“intelligent robotics” to the fast food realm. It’s been a
real adventure – and a real eye-opener into the hurdles that current
robotics technologies face when attempting to become deployable across
10’s of thousands of restaurant units.
This
talk focuses on the adoption of advanced robotics technologies in an industry
that has seen little significant technological progress in the last decade or
more – and how those adoption issues shaped the development of a new
class of robotics software: the Automated Restaurant Manager.
.
|
Speaker Biography |
R. Craig Coulter graduated from the Robotics Ph.D.
program in 1996. A long-time student of history, he became interested in the problem
and process of technology commercialization and how these might be applied to
robotics technologies. Specifically, how a field of research whose future
vision has been so thoroughly explored in literature and motion pictures will
actually begin to form as an industry – and how technical agenda can best
align with market forces to hasten that industry’s growth.
Coulter joined the National Robotics Engineering
Consortium in 1996 as a post-doc, later becoming a Project Scientist. He joined
an Internet start-up in 1997, originally as a product director, later becoming
CEO. After the 2001 Market Crash, he joined with other former RI scientists to
found HyperActive Technologies, Inc. a new robotics
start-up dedicated to bringing intelligent robotics technologies to the
quick-service restaurant industry.
|
Speaker Appointments |
For appointments, please contact Matt Mason.
The Robotics Institute is part of the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University.