LONDON: No need to tip this waiter! A sci-fi restaurant in China has employed robots to work as waiters, cooks, entertainers and receptionists. The restaurant has 18 types of robots, each gliding out of the kitchen to provide dishes, with speciality robots including a dumpling robot and a noodle robot. As a diner walks in, one of the robots extends its arm to the side and, with a sci-fi flourish, says “Earth Person, Hello, Welcome to the Robot Restaurant”, the ‘Daily Mail’ reported.
After the diners have placed their order, the robots in the kitchen start cooking and once the dish is prepared, a robot waiter, which runs along tracks on the floor, carries it from kitchen to the table. Prepared dishes are placed on a suspended conveyor belt and when the plate reaches the right table, the mechanical arms lift it off and sets it down.
As people eat, a singing robot entertains diners. The robots have been designed and manufactured by a Chinese company. Chief Engineer Liu Hasheng, said they invested USD eight million in setting up the gen-next restaurant. “Staff in the computer room can manage the whole robot team. After the busy times during the day, the robot will go for a ‘meal’, which is electricity,” Liu said.
Liu added that after a two-hour charge the robot can work continuously for 5 hours. Another robot restaurant opened in Jinan in northern Shandong province in 2010, where robots resembling Star Wars droids circle the room carrying trays of food in a conveyor belt-like system.
A Chinese restaurant where robots cook and serve food
A Chinese restaurant where robots cook and serve food
Oracle says data center outage causing issues faced by US TikTok users
WASHINGTON: Oracle on Tuesday said issues faced by US users of social media app TikTok are the result of a temporary weather-related power outage at an Oracle data center, after California Governor Gavin Newsom linked the issues to what he called the suppression of content critical of President Donald Trump.
“Over the weekend, an Oracle data center experienced a temporary weather-related power outage which impacted TikTok,” Oracle spokesperson Michael Egbert said in an email.
A powerful winter storm struck much of the US over the weekend.
“The challenges US TikTok users may be experiencing are the result of technical issues that followed the power outage, which Oracle and TikTok are working to quickly resolve,” Egbert said.
On Monday, Newsom said his office was launching a review to determine if TikTok’s content moderation practices violated state law.
“Following TikTok’s sale to a Trump-aligned business group, our office has received reports — and independently confirmed instances — of suppressed content critical of President Trump,” Newsom’s office had said.
TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, last week finalized a deal to set up a majority US-owned joint venture known as TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC that will secure US data, to avert a ban on the short video app used by more than 200 million Americans. The deal was praised by Trump.
The joint venture has denied censorship, saying “it would be inaccurate to report that this is anything but the technical issues we’ve transparently confirmed.”
Each of the joint venture’s three managing investors — cloud computing giant Oracle, private equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX — will hold a stake of 15 percent. The deal provides for American and global investors to hold 80.1 percent of the venture while ByteDance will own 19.9 percent.
The joint venture said on Tuesday it “made significant progress in recovering our US infrastructure with our US data center partner” but noted that US users may still face some technical issues, including when posting new content.
With more than 16 million followers on his personal TikTok account, Trump credited the app with helping him win the 2024 election.
Last week’s deal was a milestone for TikTok after years of battles with the US government over Washington’s concerns about risks to national security and privacy under Trump and former President Joe Biden.
