AI Fryer

Artificial intelligence-enhanced robots have already overtaken the burger flippers of America — and they’re coming for the deep fryers at Buffalo Wild Wings next.

Miso Robotics launched its burger-cooking robot arm Flippy back in 2018, as an easy way for restaurants to cut labor costs. Even Walmart tested Flippy in its many kitchens. Then in 2020, White Castle hired its own fleet of Flippys.

Now, the company is moving on to the next step of its world robotics domination plan with a new robot called Flippy Wings, or “Wingy.”

As its name suggests, the robot is designed to use AI vision to identify pieces of food like chicken wings and then drop them into a deep fryer — yet another instance, it needs to be said, of robots coming for our jobs.

Miso Robotics claims Wingy will actually make restaurants safer by removing the possibility of having human restaurant workers burn themselves. “Team members are able to cook more while spending far less time attending to the deep fryer,” reads a press release.

“Flippy Wings fries fresh, frozen or hand-breaded products like a pro, avoiding cross contamination and increasing throughput while reducing costs,” CEO Mike Bell offered enthusiastically in the statement.

Despite its quirky name, Miso Robotics is placing a considerable amount of trust in the kitchen helper. Hopefully we will never see the day when Wingy decides to turn on its human masters and start launching scalding oil in the faces of its enemies — though it, and tech like it, could well cut into food service jobs.