The e-Menu is an interactive menu technology created by an Israeli start-up. Networked LCD screens located at each table provide customers with the best in service.
(e-Menu from Conceptix video review)
The company claims a number of (reasonable) advantages for their system:
Visualizing the menu with quality photos; a full description of each items with calorie count, etc.
On-screen ordering process
Calls the waiter on demand
Requesting the bill and payment amount
Interactive communication with other customers at other tables
Interactive games
Music and video selections to keep patrons entertained while waiting.
This kind of system was predicted almost one hundred years ago by none other thann Edgar Rice Burroughs. In his 1912 story A Princess of Mars he writes:
Kantos Kan led me to one of these gorgeous eating places where we were served entirely by mechanical apparatus. No hand touched the food from the time it entered the building in its raw state until it emerged hot and delicious upon the tables before the guests, in response to the touching of tiny buttons to indicate their desires. [my italics]
(Read more about automated restaurants)
Take An Infinite Walk In Flexible Spaces
'The walls began to purr and recede into crystalline distance, it seemed, and presently an African veldt appeared...'- Ray Bradbury, 1951.
HP 3D Display Images Hover Above Device
'Instantly there appeared standing upon the disk... a lifesize and moving and stereoscopically perfect image...'- Edmond Hamilton, 1928.
LCD-based Smart Contact Lens Display
'You've got DreamTime technology in contact lenses? That's not available to the public!'- Niven and Barnes, 1992.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!)
is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for
the Invention Category that interests
you, the Glossary, the Invention
Timeline, or see what's New.
Sky City's 220 Stories Are Go
'It rested among green parklands and... stood in total isolation, a glittering block of whites and flashing windows dotted with colors.'
Robo-Raven Flapping Wing Robot Bird
'When he had first built them, they had been crude indeed, flying mechanisms with little more than a reflex-response unit.'