PASADENA, Calif. – Workers at CaliBurger’s Pasadena, California, location will have an extra hand in the kitchen helping during the lunch rush.

Flippy, billed as the world’s first autonomous robotic kitchen assistant, will be flipping burger patties and removing them from the grill when cooked to order.

Here's how it works: Miso AI uses 3D, thermal and regular vision to automatically detect when raw burger patties are placed on the grill. Each patty is monitored in real-time throughout the cooking process. Miso AI displays the cooking time on a screen which also alerts kitchen staff when to place cheese on top or add other toppings to a burger.

 

Flippy
 

Flippy is the creation of Miso Robotics, which is leveraging artificial intelligence to help chefs cook food consistently and improve working conditions in restaurant and commercial kitchens. Miso Robotics developed Miso AI, a cloud-based learning platform that powers industrial robotic arms.

“I couldn’t be more proud of my incredibly talented team for their hard work in bringing Flippy to life and we are just getting started,” David Zito, co-founder and CEO of Miso Robotics, said in a statement. “Our mission is to improve working conditions of chefs and line cooks with assistants, not replace them. Anyone who’s ever worked in a restaurant knows how hard the work is and the value of extra hands and that’s exactly what we built.”

Miso AI enables Flippy to switch from using a spatula for raw meat and one for cooked meat. Flippy also can clean spatulas while cooking and wipe down the grill with a scraper.

John Miller, chairman of Cali Group, said, “The deployment of Flippy in CaliBurger restaurants represents a major milestone in helping our staff produce mouthwatering burgers more consistently and in a timely manner. The ease of integration into our existing kitchen lines will also allow us to quickly install Flippy in more locations nationwide.”