If you're a fan of science fiction, you've probably seen your fair share of robots in movies—think Atlas, Wifelike , or I, Robot . In these films, robots often steal the show. For instance, in Wifelike , humanoid robots are programmed to emulate your dead spouse. In Atlas , a humanoid robot, Harlan, goes rogue and leads a war of machines against humans. While these robots are just the stuff of fiction, I recently stumbled upon something that brought these fantasies a little closer to reality: a robot restaurant right here in Nairobi.
The first-ever robot restaurant in Kenya lies on the ground floor of the Lana Plaza in Kileleshwa. In the restaurant, two robots stand in each corner of the room, and one robot stands at the kitchen counter, waiting for an order.
As I settle in, I observe Nadia, a femme bot, delivering food to the table next to mine. “Your order is ready. You are welcome.” An excited young lad gets up to pick up the meal and presses a button labelled exit.
“Okay, I am going back now,” Nadia says and heads back to her corner in the restaurant. Nadia is a white femme bot (female robot) dressed in a red dress. She has two sets of trays where the food is placed, and she moves stealthily and slowly.
Over the next five minutes, I take time to observe the flurry of activities in the restaurant. Each table has a QR code that you scan to get the menu. You can order online or call the waiter to your table. When your order is ready, a bell rings, alerting the waiter, who then comes to pick up your order and places it on the robot’s tray. I watch as she places the order on Nadia’s plate, goes over to another table, and picks up an iPad.
She keys in a few commands, and Nadia moves, carrying the food to Table 8. As I watch Nadia smoothly deliver food to the table, I cannot help but wonder why she's not tasked with carrying drinks, too—perhaps that's a job still reserved for human hands. Instead, I watch as the waitress carries the drinks to the table.
The waitress comes to clear the table, this time with Nadia in tow. She carefully loads the dishes onto the robot, which carries them back to the kitchen. It's a fascinating view of humans and machines working together. The waitress stays behind to collect the payments.
What started as a desire to bring uniqueness to the hospitality industry has become the first restaurant in the country that has incorporated robots as part of the workforce.
“One of the company directors is well-travelled and has seen so much in the dining space. Most restaurants can prepare good food, properly dress their staff, and understand the secrets of hospitality service. But there needs to be something that will make you stand out and be different from everyone else. So we picked robots,” John Kariuki, the Robot Café’s manager, tells Nation Lifestyle. “ Robots are part of the restaurant’s aesthetics.”
Work alongside humans, not against them.
With the onset of robot technology, there is concern that robots will steal human jobs, but this is not the case with Robot Cafe. The restaurant has 52 employees, and you can see waiters and waitresses operating normally in the restaurant.
“In our case, the robots are part of the waiters and are not here to substitute them. They help make their work easier. There is no way you can make an order and the robot comes and takes your order. We have to send a human waitress to take the order so that they can customise it to your liking. We have not enabled the function to allow the robot to take orders.
"It is still a work in progress to get the robots to take the orders correctly without making any mistakes. Of course, later on, the robot will bring you your food,” the 29-year-old says, adding, “The waiters carry and serve your drinks because of stability issues, especially when the landscape is not flat or comfortable. Robots do not have the self-thinking abilities that human beings do. The robot cannot tell that it has to tilt in a particular way. Hopefully, in future, we can have robots that do more tasks. But I wouldn’t advise that we go for concepts that will replace or substitute human beings with machines.”
The three femme bots are in red and blue dresses, and all have names: Nadia, R24, and Claire. While the robots cannot acknowledge their names when you call out, they can communicate, even informing you that you are blocking their path. “However, it cannot hold a normal conversation with a human being like the one we are having.”
Photo credit: Billy Ogada | Nation Media Group
“Over the years, human beings have not connected better with other human beings. Some people get angry and have a bad attitude, but machines don’t do that. They do whatever you want them to do. The servers have the advantage of working with a machine. They can deliver the food together all at once. They can clear the table together. It saves them from doing monotonous tasks,” John explains how the robots work with the waiters.
The robots only deliver food to the table and you would have to pick it up yourself or have the waiter do it for you. The femmebots are operated from a command centre.
“It could be a laptop, a phone, or a computer, as long as the gadget has the software required to control it. The robot is controlled manually or automatically. The best way to have it automated, as it can control itself. The automated version is where the robot is controlled from the command centre and directed to a particular table. The manual control would require a remote controller to direct it, mostly used when we have large crowds and have had to move the tables around.”
He adds that the robots operate using the AIDAS system. He attempts to explain it simply by comparing it to how an aeroplane works. “When a pilot is flying an aeroplane, they do not hold on to the steering wheel to the US. He uses an autopilot to get you to your destination, as it has already been taught that route. It is the same way with the femme bots. They have already learned the outlay of the restaurant and know where each table is located.”
Photo credit: Billy Ogada | Nation Media Group
Worries about malfunction
If you’ve watched enough sci-fi movies, you know that they often malfunction or develop a mind of their own. So, while I sit in the restaurant, I can't help but worry: what if it goes all berserk and attacks us? That is me thinking outside the box or maybe just overimagining things, but either way, Mr Kairuki puts us at ease.
“Whoever designed the robots understood that they might malfunction, so they created an emergency button. If it is doing something it is not supposed to be, you can press the button, and it goes offline.” He says as he points to a large red button at the back of the robots.
Just then, Nadia, the femme bot, has its path blocked by a large plant vase. It halts and only moves when its direction path is changed. “When the vase blocked its path, it didn’t speak because whatever was blocking it was non-human.”
"The market value of some of the items that we are selling is way above, but we try to incorporate everyone. We want to become a family-friendly restaurant. With Sh1,100, you can have a very nice breakfast; if you have Sh3,000, you can get a good lunch. We are not charging anyone for the robots,” Mr Kariuki says.
If you buy a new car, there is no maintenance for that vehicle for the longest time because it is new. We are only two months in operation, so we have not updated our systems yet. We expect to deal with the issue of wear and tear as we move forward. The wheels might need replacement and oiling. So far, we have not encountered any maintenance issues. We are good to go as long as we are connected to the Wi-Fi and they are well-charged. The only challenge we faced was in the first week we began operations, one of the charges blew out, and it is not easily available in Nairobi, so we had to use a helicopter to fly in a charger from Nigeria,” he says, adding, “The food comes as a plus.”
The robots are charged overnight every day so that they can run throughout the day. While acknowledging the high cost of importing the robots, John hopes that Kenya can one day create its own robots. All the waiters have been taught how to operate the robots.
As I was leaving, I couldn’t help but wonder—how cool would it be if the robot could engage me in small talk about the weather before taking my order? There goes my overactive imagination, probably fuelled by one too many sci-fi movies.
