Towards Foodservice Robotics: A Taxonomy of Actions of Foodservice Workers and a Critical Review of Supportive Technology

Foodservice workers perform several burdensome, tedious, and unsafe tasks that risk their health and well-being. This could be mitigated or even more avoided by using autonomously-actuated machines. Therefore, this article aims to build the foundation to support the development of a new field of robotics research dedicated to foodservice and with a human/worker-centered framework. As so, we introduce a two-level taxonomy of basic actions that compose the physical tasks of foodservice workers; it can guide future studies to design bio-inspired control models for foodservice robots. Actions are clustered in 16 categories according to their purpose and to the handled food. Furthermore, authors make a critical review of single-action equipment (SAE) and advanced equipment (AE) currently available for foodservice, which allowed us to identify opportunities for research. As a result, authors found some categories of actions rarely automated, aimed at i) separating solid-solid food parts, ii) moving food between workstations or independent appliances in the kitchen, iii) introducing food into another solid food or recipient, and iv) other specific actions, e.g. trussing food. In addition, authors discuss the applicability of collaborative robotics and human-robot collaboration to different contexts in foodservice, and show how artificial intelligence is improving the capabilities of SAE and AE and what else it could improve in this context.
Note to Practitioners
—This paper was motivated by a critical need in foodservice: the ability to produce consistent and high-quality meals ad-hoc, without overloading the workers or harming their health. Robotic and autonomous systems are promising technologies to solve this. However, there is not a unified framework in robotics research focused on the professional foodservice environment. This paper provides two tools for researchers and engineers in this field: (i) a taxonomy of basic actions that foodservice workers perform during their physical tasks; and (ii) a systematic review of mechatronic systems being developed or already in use in foodservice. The taxonomy can be immediately useful to divide research and development by the classes of actions. In addition, we found specific categories of actions that have been rarely automated so far and need further investigation. The results of our review can be readily applied in industry, too: presently, most equipment is a custom-built machine with limited adaptiveness; when systems include industrial robots, cobots are being preferred; the implementation of collaborative operations between humans and robots is not common yet and its applicability may be suitable only for certain contexts; finally, we identify scientific publications introducing adaptive control strategies and movement policies for some actions that can be implemented today to achieve a more robust actuation.