“Spice,” the robot busboy, makes its way around Sam Nalli, the general manager of Saffron Indian Bistro.

 RICK WILEY PHOTOS, Arizona Daily Star

When given the assignment of carrying several tables worth of unwashed dishes to the kitchen for cleaning, a job that would put a frown on any restaurant worker’s face, Saffron Indian Bistro‘s newest employee just rolls with it.

More often than not, the act is met with smiles from restaurant patrons, who break out their phones to take video of the otherwise tedious task for TikTok, Facebook and other forms of social media.

In those instances, all eyes are on “Spice,” a Servi hospitality robot, a little taller than R2-D2, that Saffron recently acquired to help its employees around the dining area.

When fully charged, “Spice,” with its several tiers to handle multiple jobs, can deliver food, drinks, take orders and assist in clearing tables for up to 12 hours at a time.

Saffron owner Mintu Sareen said they are only using their Servi for busing and bringing take-out from the back kitchen to the host’s stand.

“I don’t want to replace people with technology,” said Sareen. Saffron Indian Bistro has 53 employees. “We will always have that human touch. We got this to help our staff, so they don’t have to carry loads of dishes after meals.”

Sareen is renting the hospitality robot from Bear Robotics, a company in Redwood City, California, that specializes in self-driving technology geared to assist in restaurants, hotels, casinos, arenas and senior living facilities.

Saffron, which is located at 7607 N. Oracle Road in Oro Valley, is the first business in the Tucson area to have a Servi and one of only 20 businesses in the state. The rest are concentrated in the Phoenix area, including at a Hyatt Regency hotel and a Denny’s in Mesa, according to Juan Higueros, co-founder and chief operating officer at Bear Robotics.

Higueros said Bear Robotics launched in 2017 and has more than 6,000 Servi robots operating in businesses in 43 states, South Korea, Ireland and Japan.

Customers have the option to rent a Servi from the company, for between $699 and $899 a month depending on how long they want it. They can also buy a Servi outright for just shy of $15,000, with ongoing tech support from the company.

“Think of it as an additional set of hands,” Higueros said. “The employees are able to participate in more engaging activities instead of menial, repetitive tasks. Sometimes those trays can be pretty heavy. Carrying them for eight hours a day can be cumbersome.”

When a restaurant signs on with Bear Robotics, a field operator comes out to map a layout of the business, which is then programmed into the Servi, setting the parameters on where it can and cannot go within a designated area.

If Table 6 needs to be cleaned, a server will enter the number of the table into a tablet built into the robot. Once the Servi finds its way to the table, the server loads it with dishes. The robot then heads back to the kitchen while the server moves on to help the next customer.

“Spice” sits in the corner waiting to be called as servers pass from the kitchen at Saffron.

Higueros said Bear Robotics is working on more advanced hospitality robots that will be able to take elevators and work on multiple floors of hotels and office buildings.

“They will be able to deliver Amazon packages dropped off at the front desk, groceries, Uber Eats deliveries, everything and anything,” he said. “It has taken us a few years to get here. Now, you are hopefully going to start seeing more of these in your everyday life.”

Bear Robotics can access all Servi robots through its online network, which means any updates to the software can be made off-site. On a recent Tuesday, Saffron’s Servi had to be rebooted several times, a bug that the company fixed remotely, Higueros said.

The system glitches shook Sareen’s confidence in his new employee’s abilities, but he is opting to stick with it, for now.

“It is a new technology,” Sareen said. “It is going to take time.”

Sareen said when the Servi is working, which has, so far, been the vast majority of the time, it is both helpful to his human employees and entertaining for the guests.

“People love it,” Sareen said. “It has a cool factor. I want kids to say to their parents, ‘I want to go to that robot restaurant.’”

It's no secret that the way technology is affecting our everyday life has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. With many companies struggling to find workers and pay higher wages, some retailers and restaurants are investing in robots and other technology. Source by: Stringr

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