The Shanghai KFC welcomes you with a futuristic robotic restaurateur, christened Dumi. Dumi is a voice-activated robot that can take customer orders.
The clever AI-powered robot not only understands order changes but can also deal with order substitutions. The design of Dumi was finalised by Baidu, a web service company operating out of China. It took the company an arduous 10 years to perfect the design and algorithm of Dumi.
The KFC concept store, named Original+, is operational at the National Exhibition and Convention Centre in Shanghai. A complete digital experience is offered to the customers via the mobile payment services, equipped with the Baidu Wallet.
The customers can utilise the wireless charging stations, accessible via the QR codes, to play music, charge their smart devices, and make payments.
The makers of Dumi are still tweaking to perfect the robot’s understanding of various dialects and languages; currently, the robot is having trouble in taking orders from the English and the Shanghainese speaking customers.
Baidu is planning to launch Dumi in the real restaurants very soon.
Previously, KFC had introduced the QQ stores that enabled the customers to make payment via a popular messaging portal.
The only problem that the customers might struggle with is whether to tip the robotic server or not!
