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Manna
A software program that autonomously manages restaurants or other service industry businesses. (Read the full article)
| "This is exactly how they get store orders stacked up in Wal-Mart Distribution Centers. When they come in, orderfillers don their headsets and climb on their power equipment (battery powered, two pallet fork trucks) and the computer assigns them a trip. This trip is made up of some number of slot assignments and when you arrive at a slot, you call off a three-digit check number to verify you are at the right slot. Then the headset tells you how many cases to pick and you stack it all up. This continues at each successive slot until the trip is done. At that point, you get another trip. To be successful at this (and also earn bonus money,) you have to time manage at the level of seconds. Every time you turn your head to recheck a slot number or you have to wait for another orderfiller, you have to earn those seconds back by working faster. If your pallets tip over, you have to pick them up and you have to earn that time back . You do get down time for equipment problems and breaks, but the minutes of travel time to and from the break room has to be earned back. The situation described in the robot-run restaurant sounded just like what Wal-mart orderfillers do every day. Every second is accounted for. And there are cameras almost everywhere (parking lot, cash registers, hallways, entrances and exits and in the aisles where the orderfillers work.) This might make you laugh, but aside from the main entrance, all the exit doors are alarmed so that security knows who opened what door at what time and they can review the camera aimed at that door." ( 6/19/2006 2:35:19 PM ) |
| ""The scariest thing about Manna is that anyone could implement it using present-day technology."
Meet the real life version of Manna: "Hyperactive Bob", installed in the restaraunts of the Zaxby's fast-food chain. It might not be quite as over the top, but I believe it's just version 1...
Full details: http://www.livescience.com/technology/060619_hyperactive_bob.html" (TerrorBite 6/2/2007 11:57:02 PM ) |
| "TerrorBite - I know; I wrote that article. It's taken from an article on this site. See http://technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=653
Thanks for writing anyway - my own sister has made that same kind of mistake; nobody checks the author of an article." ( 6/3/2007 5:30:04 AM ) |
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