Robot waiters and delivery robots — Pudu BellaBot, Keenon T8 and T10 — carry dishes in restaurants, towels and orders in hotels. This is one of the most mature classes of robots: Pudu and Keenon have each shipped over 100,000 machines. For business, it means fewer runs with trays and more staff time for guests; for the guest, an order that arrives on its own.
How it works
At launch, a technician walks the robot around the room, and it builds a map: the lidar sweeps a laser beam and measures distances to walls, columns and counters, and the cameras memorize details. Each table becomes a point on the map with its own number. From then on, the robot knows where it is and plans a path along the aisles from the kitchen to the right table.
On the move, the robot looks ahead with depth cameras and sensors near the floor. A person, a chair, a bag in the aisle — it slows down, goes around or politely waits for the way to clear. Its speed is limited so that soup doesn’t slosh on a turn. In a hotel, the robot rides the elevator if the elevator is connected to its system, and tells the guest the order is at the door.
The work looks like this: the waiter puts the order on the trays and taps the table number — the robot delivers, and the person stays with the guests. On the way back, the robot collects dirty dishes. It is controlled from a touchscreen, and in large halls several robots share routes among themselves so they don’t meet head-on in a narrow aisle. The robot charges at a station or by cable between shifts.
Where it already works
- Restaurants and cafés — carrying dishes to tables and collecting dirty dishes
- Hotels — towels, orders and small items to the room door
- Russia — the robots were tested at the Perekrestok supermarket chain, the Shokoladnitsa café chain and Vkusno — i Tochka (the former McDonald’s in Russia)
- Vietnam — Keenon works through its local partner DigiCorp
- Pudu — 120,000–130,000 robots in more than 80 countries
What to consider
- Thresholds, carpets, steps and narrow aisles cut a robot’s usefulness — look at the site before buying
- Dealer prices for the same model differ by 26–57% — compare several offers
- BellaBot rental — from ~$409 a month: you can try the robot at work before buying
- The robot carries but does not wait on tables: serving the dish and talking to the guest stay with people