A nonprofit in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district has adopted robotic meal preparation technology to address a lack of human volunteers. The machines are producing items such as potato salad.
The robots function as volunteers in the kitchen rather than replacements for paid staff. They handle tasks in the city’s most troubled district where volunteer numbers have fallen short.
Physical Intelligence, a San Francisco startup founded in 2024, is advancing robot control systems that learn multiple tasks using vision-language-action models derived from large language models. The company has demonstrated robots performing varied activities such as making coffee, folding clothes and cooking sweet potatoes based on verbal instructions.
Reported by AI
South Korea has conducted a test delivery of fried chicken to a remote island using a drone combined with a four-wheel robot. The operation, dubbed the world's most elaborate takeaway, aims to explore innovative logistics for isolated areas. It was reported on April 30, 2026.