Plano’s American Robotech provides area businesses, mostly restaurants, with robots like these. Courtesy of American Robotech

BY ALEX MACON 

Restaurants are increasingly turning to automated solutions to their staffing shortages. Is the future of labor a delivery robot on wheels?

If you want a picture of the future of work, maybe it’s this: a cat-like cartoon displayed on an iPad-like screen perched on a vertical aluminum or plastic frame on wheels, rolling right up to your table, forever. The robot also sings “Happy Birthday” at you. And, look there, it has your beer.

You can see it for yourself at several Dallas businesses, including the McKinney Avenue restaurant La Duni, whose owner told the Dallas Morning News that robots have saved him thousands of dollars a month in labor costs as well as the trouble of finding enough human servers to staff his restaurant in a tight market for low-wage workers.

The machines are built in China by Pudu Robotics. But they are programmed and delivered here by the Plano company American Robotech, which has either sold or rented about 30 of its robots to area businesses, mostly restaurants so far. They lease for about $500 a month and sell for anywhere between $10,000 to $17,000 a pop.

by Otilia Drăgan

Forget autonomous vehicles, there’s something even cooler around the corner – a robotic pony that not only can be ridden just like a real one, but is even able to interact in a clever way. Xiaomi-backed Chinese carmaker Xpeng is the one who’s introducing it on the market, and it’s probably safe to say it will be a big hit. 6 photos

Robotic representations of animals aren’t new, with the most famous one probably being Spot, the yellow dog created by Boston Dynamics. Launched last year, the friendly-looking dog delighted fans around the world with his abilities, such as dancing or picking up stuff off the floor – that is, when it wasn’t busy detecting radiation or taking part in military exercises. 

But this new pony takes things further, by blurring the lines between a robot and an autonomous vehicle for kids. A creation of Xpeng Robotics, a new subsidiary of the Xpeng car manufacturing company, this adorable four-legged creature (with a barely-noticeable unicorn) is actually rideable. And, from what we can see in the launch video, its walk is remarkably similar to a pony gait.