Abstract
Under strict social-distancing directives during the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the most impacted businesses is probably the catering industry, which has been forced to earn their revenue mainly from delivery and takeout services. However, traditional takeouts require patrons to wait in line, order and pick up their meals, incurring unnecessary human contact and service inefficiency. We observe these drawbacks and propose a contactless meal order and takeout service (Mots) automated system realized by AI-assisted smart robots to address the issue. In our Mots system, we develop a bump-free schedule based on the Welsh-Powell coloring algorithm for grouping robots into several non-colliding moving batches. Simulation results show that our Mots solution can effectively improve takeout efficiency and promote service accuracy, boosting business profits up to 95.4% under simulated cases for various cafeteria scales and shop popularity differences, compared to the traditional takeout method. Our experiments suggest that Mots is also capable of accommodating a sudden surge of arriving patrons within a short period of time. Furthermore, we have implemented a proof-of-concept prototype to demonstrate our Mots automated operations.
Highlights
A S OF mid January 2021, approximately 91 million people have been infected with the coronavirus and 1.95 million deaths have been reported worldwide
This work was cosponsored by ITRI, Gunitech Corp., Pervasive Artificial Intelligence Research (PAIR) Labs, Center for Open Intelligent Connectivity (Featured Areas Research Center Program within the framework of Higher Education Sprout Project), and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of Taiwan under Grants #1092634-F-009-026 and #105-2218-E-009-003. (Corresponding author: Ting-Yu Lin.)
Our contactless meal order and takeout service (Mots) offers online orders so that meals can be prepared beforehand, and allows patrons to arrive at any empty spot, without having to wait in a long line
Summary
A S OF mid January 2021, approximately 91 million people have been infected with the coronavirus and 1.95 million deaths have been reported worldwide. Our contactless meal order and takeout service (Mots) offers online orders so that meals can be prepared beforehand, and allows patrons to arrive at any empty spot, without having to wait in a long line. Those waiting spots can be designed in a semicircular shape at fixed locations, easier to maintain safe social distances between patrons in a space-limited mall/cafeteria. Our goal is to contribute a practical IoT-based contactless meal takeout solution via AIassisted smart robots during the pandemic to minimize physical human contact while maintaining satisfactory dietary needs.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call