If you’ve seen any of the movies from The Terminator franchise or even last year’s Oscar-nominated Netflix animated film The Mitchells vs. the Machines, you know the world is only one bad fuse away from a robot apocalypse.
If robots are inevitably going to take over, however, we might as well have some tasty snacks to munch on while we watch them take control of the planet, amirite?
The fast-food chain Chipotle, known for its fast and casual Mexican style food, has the right idea if the sci-fi scenario ever happens. The company is currently testing out a robot that uses artificial intelligence to make tortilla chips.
Don’t worry. The robot doesn’t have a menacing name like the T-1000 or Optimus Prime. The Chipotle robot, perfected by Miso Robotics, is appropriately called Chippy. It’s following the restaurant’s recipe and whipping up bags of crunchy tortilla chips for customers to dip into their guacamole and queso. Apparently, it was important for Chipotle not to lose the inconsistent technique that a human cook would use to fry the chips themselves.
“Everyone loves finding a chip with a little more salt or an extra hint of lime,” Nevielle Panthaky, Chipotle’s vice president of culinary, said in a statement. “To ensure we didn’t lose the humanity behind our culinary experience, we trained Chippy extensively to ensure the output mirrored our current product, delivering some subtle variations in flavor that our guests expect.”
Currently, Chippy is being tested at the Chipotle Cultivate Center in Irvine, California. It will start making its way into Chipotle restaurants in Southern California later this year before launching a possible nationwide rollout. Then, of course, world domination follows.