Don't drink and drone

A Singapore restaurant plans to use drones to transport food and drinks from the kitchen to a wait station near customers’ tables by the end of this year. That's all well and good, but delivering plates of food and drink to individual tables sounds like a recipe for disaster. How does the drone know where to hover? What if someone bumps into the drone or is standing in its way? While Infinium Robotics, the Singapore company that’s developing the drones for restaurant chain Timbre, claims it’s all technically possible, Timbre won’t be delivering food from the kitchen straight to customers’ tables. It wants to preserve a human touch. So the drones will fly from the kitchen to two stations frequented by waiters. The routes are 30 and 60 feet (9.15 and 18.3 m). The drones are programmed to fly no lower than 8½ feet (2.6 m), so as not to crash into any guests. And they will need power too, so how will they get that power? It's simple - the drones automatically charge while waiting in the kitchen. After the chef puts an order on the drone, he hits a button on a keypad and the drone automatically flies to one of two wait stations. Sense-and-avoid technology built into the drone won’t allow it to land at the wait station if anything is in its way. The drones are also equipped with sonar and an infrared sensor. A waiter then removes the food or drink from the drone and hits a button that sends it back to the kitchen. The 5⅓-pound (2.4 kg) drones can carry just over four pounds (1.8 kg) of food. Infinium Robotics, which develops the hardware and software, is working on a model that will carry twice as much food. Way to put busboys out of work, Timbre. I knew it was all about money. The waiters will clearly be the next to go.