In Mountain View, California, Zume Pizza has opened, and, like most pizzerias, offers affordable take-out options. From the outside, the pizzeria appears to be a typical store, producing classic pizzas for an affordable price; however the baking process is anything but traditional.

Zume’s staff includes two robot employees, who work alongside humans to efficiently create delicious pizza. The robots, named Marta and Bruno, help to construct the pizza, benefiting the business by streamlining the multistep procedure while also providing less human contact with food and lowering production costs.

First, a chef flattens a ball of dough with a press, creating a circle the size of crust required. Once the dough is formed, it is placed on a conveyor belt where is begins its journey towards the oven.

The pizza makes its way under a tube which dispenses a specified amount of tomato sauce in the center of the dough. The dough then moves to Marta, the first robot worker, who hangs from the ceiling inside a glass box. Marta lowers a ladle-like arm to the dough and gradually moving outwards using a circular motion, distributes the sauce evenly in less than two seconds. In order to prevent the appearance of a factory-made pizza, she has been programmed to not be perfect in her sauce distribution.

The conveyor then takes the pizza to a chef who sprinkles on cheese and the specific toppings chosen by the customer. The pizza is met by Bruno, the second robot, at the end of the conveyor belt where it is put in the oven. This five foot tall ABB robot has the sole job of picking up uncooked pizza from the conveyor and placing it in an oven until it is half-cooked.

The pizza is then loaded onto the Zume delivery truck which contains 56 separate ovens to finish cooking the pizza as it travels to the customer. This last step ensures that pizza is as fresh and hot as possible when delivered.

The Zume Pizza kitchen involves an intricate assembly line, where versatile robots work seamlessly alongside human counterparts. Eclipse Automations offers a diverse range of quality automation solutions for human/robot integrated projects, including tending and dispensing, to enable you to optimize your production lines in a safe and cost-efficient manner.

Source: Bloomberg