You don’t need a professional chef to make a perfect pizza anymore. A pizzeria called Zume Pizza is looking to take the art of pizza making to another level as its co-founder Julia Collins aims to create the first ever automated pizza factory entailing minimal human intervention.
Using this technology, a customer can place his/her order using the company website or an app. Human intervention is required when a person spreads the dough onto a conveyor belt. Then the amazing technology takes over, as all the processes ranging from squirting the tomato sauce to spreading it across the base.
After this, the pizza reaches the next human, who covers it in toppings. It is now ready to be placed into an 800-degree oven, which is picked up and placed using a six-axis ABB robot.
The quality of the pizza along with other parameters such as thickness, size and rate of travel is regulated using cameras and optical sensors.
This automation process reaches the most interesting phase when the par-cooked pizza is cut by the machine into even slices which are fully baked afterwards.
All this process occurs using one of the 56 computerised ovens in the truck which are operated by the drivers.
Collins said while talking about this invention,
“[Each oven] actually uses an algorithm that is a combination of GPS, but also real-time drive data, and that allows us to account for things like traffic delays, or any other anomalies that occur on the delivery route.”
At maximum capacity, this amazing system is capable of churning out over 5,000 pizzas each day, and judging by Collins’ aspiration of making this process fully automated, this number can go even higher.
He added,
“I don’t believe that full-scale automation is the answer to any problem involving food. You will always need human beings when you’re making food and serving it to people. What we’re talking about is task replacement as opposed to occupation replacement.”
After Domino’s pizza delivery drone, Zume Pizza is one of the very few companies to bring technology into the pizza business. Although the company is currently delivering within a small area in Mountain View, it aspires to soon expand into Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, Atherton and Los Gatos, San Jose, Milpitas, Cupertino and other San Francisco Bay areas.
What are your thoughts on this pizza from the future? Comment below!
