These robots are making junk food in San Francisco’s Tenderloin

This potato-salad-slinging AI chefs are not taking over everyone’s jobs. Not, however. They just came as volunteers.

Project Open Handa non-profit organization founded in 1985 by local grandmothers and HIV awareness advocates. Ruth Brinkerprepares and packages food to meet the needs of the people who need it. The effort began as an AIDS response, but the non-profit organization has expanded to cater to people with heart disease, diabetes, or kidney disease.

But it takes a lot of people to make these meals, and Project Open Hand has struggled to attract volunteers to help fill food containers. The organization occupies a four-story building in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. Often times, the place is like a large operation, often with lots of people. Some of them are there in need of free food, others are workers and volunteers there to make food and maintain the place.

Putting together medically compatible food boxes can be difficult. Different patients have different needs, so the food that goes to donate money can not be the same-all and must calculate the pain and nutritional needs according to the needs of people and diseases. That’s where robots come in.

“They don’t run anymore,” says Alma Caceres, a sous chef who works in food preparation at Project Open Hand. “I mean we don’t have volunteers.”

Robotic Chef is a San Francisco company that develops “physical AI for the food industry.” It is one of the many companies that focus on creating robotics that can perform better hold on to material things. Self-service robot chefs focus on the dishes – without cooking or cutting them – just to get the food from the plate to the scale. It has customers for its robo-made meals, such as Amy’s Kitchen and Factora dry food company. Chef Robotics also trains its robots to perform more complex tasks, such as assembling a hamburger piece by piece.

The partnership with Open Hand came out of informal discussions between employees from the two organizations at Bay Area Rapid Transit. When presented with the idea, Project Open Hand CEO Paul Hepfer said the cost of renting the robots seemed worth it. (Yes, they pay a subscription fee.)

“Nonprofits often operate in a very tight space, and I think that’s counterproductive to the people we serve, because then you’re not looking for innovation or improvement,” Hepfer told WIRED. “Not a lot of robots, AI, and innovation in the Tenderloin, I’d bet.”