Robot serves orders in the Tufts Pop-Up Pub

As robots become more integrated in daily life, researchers like Karol Family Applied Technology Professor Matthias Scheutz of the Department of Computer Science are at the forefront of innovation. One of his recent technology transition projects involved integrating a food-serving robot into the Tufts Pop-Up Pub.

At the pub, guests place their order at the bar, and their food is deposited at a pickup station where guests can retrieve it. This is where robots like the one Scheutz developed with his team at the Tufts Human-Robot Interaction Laboratory and collaborators at Thinking Robots Inc. can be useful. Dining workers can instruct the robot to deliver an order to a specific table, and the robot will carry it directly there. The robot remains at its charging station near the food pickup area and is ready to deliver food as needed.

While many AI-powered systems take large amounts of data and power to train, Scheutz uses a system relying on symbolic methods where robots can learn tasks with no prior experience. His method does not require Wi-Fi or cloud services and thus prioritizes sustainability due to low energy consumption. “One angle of our research is to get good performance at a task without heavy computational resources,” he explained.  Another benefit to employed symbolic methods? Learning is not intrinsic to one robot and different models can be swapped out as needed.

For these early trials, the robot was restricted to simple interactions and delivery tasks to focus on the robot’s utility in the pub setting, but the capabilities of the system developed by Scheutz and his team are much more extensive. For example, the robot could be instructed to do routine scheduled tasks, such as making the rounds to all the tables every hour to collect trash and bring it back to the kitchen. It can also take voice commands via a phone app or it could collect customer experience data through surveys. The software is also not limited to the particular small and light platform, but runs also on  larger more physically capable robots that can carry more food or have built-in shelving with trays.

The robot will remain in the Tufts Pop-Up pub for the next several weeks, delivering food to select tables. But its work doesn’t end there. Another robot with the same software will also be included in the upcoming Patient Experience Week at Tufts Medical Center where it will demonstrate tasks such as escorting patients from the waiting room to the exam room. Before coming to the Pop-Up Pub, the robot was previously located in the Tufts Dental School where it escorted patients and collected patient experience data.

Amit Dutt, general manager of retail dining at Tufts, appreciates the novelty of the robot in bringing people to the pub. As a pilot program, the Pop-Up Pub is frequently looking for ways to enhance the experience on campus and create a sense of community for students, faculty, and staff. Having a food-serving robot is a unique feature that may draw additional visitors. As Dutt observed, “Curiosity, that’s what brings people together.”