A McDonald’s in the Chinese megacity of Shanghai is testing humanoid robots in roles usually the preserve of human workers, with other types of robots also let loose inside the restaurant to greet and entertain diners.
Truth be told, the robots don’t look particularly advanced, but a video (below) showing them in action does hint at a future where bipedal bots and other machines handle routine tasks at fast food restaurants, from welcoming customers and taking orders to delivering food and cleaning the floor.
The McDonald’s trial, using robots supplied by Chinese firm Keenon Robotics, comes at a time of economic contradiction in China, where businesses in some sectors are struggling to hire even as millions of young people face difficulty finding work.
It’s this tension that makes the McDonald’s trial stand out, with restaurant operators interested in deploying a reliable, potentially low-cost workforce in a strategy that raises fears of displacement among human workers in the service sector, which up to now has been a popular route into the workforce.
The reality, however, is more complicated. China’s workforce is shrinking as the population ages, while many younger job seekers are reluctant to take on low-paid, repetitive work. In that case, robot technology could be used to fill gaps rather than simply replace people. Still, the presence of robots in such a visible, everyday setting highlights how quickly that balance could shift.
While it could be a while before McDonald’s deploys humanoid robots in a more meaningful way, adding them to restaurants as greeters and entertainers could potentially draw curious diners, especially families with kids who might want to interact with the machines while waiting for their meal to arrive.
Even if the fast food giant eventually wants robots to run its restaurants, such a scenario is almost certainly many years away, simply because the technology isn’t yet up to it. What feels more likely, at least in the short term, is a hybrid setup where human workers handle the majority of tasks while the robots take on more basic, customer-facing roles out front.