Design of Introducing Service Robot into Catering Services

Abstract

With the development of artificial intelligence (AI), the application of robotics has rapidly expanded from industrial manufacturing to service industries. However, there are several important topics for introducing service robots into the service industry. The purpose of this study was to analyze and plan the introducing of service robotics, Pepper for catering services. Service blueprint analyzes and expert interview were conducted in the study. The service process of a certain restaurant, ikki, was analyzed and the current service blueprint was developed firstly. Then, a series of in-depth interviews respectively with the information expert, brand developer, store manager and customers were conducted to find out how much they know and how they feel about service robots. Simultaneously, what part of the service process can be assigned to the robot and when the task can be introduced were discussed. Finally, a service blueprint with service robots introduced at short-term, med-term and long-term stage for the specific restaurant was proposed. The result indicated that the service robot, Pepper, can mainly be applied at welcoming, reception, booking confirmation, festival celebration, and thanks for coming in the short-term stage. In the medium-term, Pepper carrying a tablet could be applied to order meal, integrating with the electronic booking system, and Pepper for Biz application to record customer behavior. The reception work should be replaced and the usher function was introduced with the mobile service robot Pepper in the long-term stage. It is an important topic to think about how to work together for the workers and service robot while introducing service robot into catering service in the future.