The Asian reporter. (Portland, Or.) 1991-current, April 03, 2023, Page 7, Image 7

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    U.S.A.
April 3, 2023
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 7
Waiter on wheels: Robot serves Japanese restaurant customers
By Clara Niel
The Frederick News-Post
REDERICK, Md. (AP) — While the
thought of a robot delivering food
and drink at a restaurant may
hearken images straight out of a Star
Wars cantina, the droid helping wait
tables at one Frederick eatery is less
R2-D2 than a souped-up iPad on wheels.
Sapporo II Japanese Restaurant at 5 W.
Church St. in downtown Frederick
welcomed a new employee several weeks
ago — a robot waiter.
It rolls around the restaurant, with a
screen displaying a cheerful cartoon face
and a little chef hat. Under the screen are
three levels of trays.
When it’s not working, it rests by the
wall and charges.
The $25,000 robot can sing customers
“Happy Birthday” or a festive Christmas
tune. It can dance and use different voices.
The restaurant staff is trying to see if
they can give the robot a British accent,
said Uriel Cuevas, head server at Sapporo
II.
With its three trays, the robot can carry
a lot of orders.
Cuevas said that for a small serving
staff, the robot — whose name is pending
— is helpful when the restaurant gets
busy.
“Let’s say there’s like five soups back
there, and other servers at tables are
attending, taking orders, socializing. We
would have the robot, of course,” Cuevas
said.
And people can only carry so many
plates, he said, while the robot can carry as
many plates as will fit on its three trays.
The robot isn’t meant to replace the
staff, Cuevas said, but rather help with the
workflow of the restaurant. Currently, the
F
robot is in its “infant” stage, Cuevas said.
The robot does not take customers’
orders. It can only be programmed to bring
people dishes or help bring dishes back to
the kitchen.
“It helps from the kitchen being clogged
up in the back with there being an
immense amount of plates. It relieves the
pressure of that,” he said.
Customers can’t interact with it yet, but
Cuevas said the restaurant is hoping to
change that.
He and Sapporo II owner Chris Song
want the robot to be able to communicate
with customers if they have questions
about the menu, like if a certain dish is
gluten free or has allergens.
Song said its most useful feature now is
to help servers clear tables.
One server might have to make multiple
ROBOTIC BUSSER. A robot waiter delivers
glasses of water to Cory Perdue, left, and Julia Perdue
at Sapporo II Japanese Restaurant in Frederick, Mary-
land, on March 15, 2023. The restaurant recently wel-
comed a new employee — a robot waiter. (Katina
Zentz/The Frederick News-Post via AP)
trips to clear a table. With the robot, a
server can pile plates, silverware, and
glasses on the robot’s trays and send it
back to the kitchen while they focus on
other tasks.
Kadin Wetherholt, a server at Sapporo
II since September, confirmed that the
robot is helpful to clean tables. It also saves
him from awkwardly singing “Happy
Birthday” to customers.
It’s cool, he said, but he wasn’t a big fan
of the robot when it first came to the
restaurant. He’s still trying to warm up to
it.
“I’m really old fashioned, so I’m like pen
and paper. I just like walking to my
tables,” he said. “I was just like, ‘Wow, like
the times have really changed.’”
Most customers love it, and whip out
their phones to take a video of it as it
cruises by their tables, Cuevas said. Other
people who don’t like technology are a
little afraid of it, but he tells them not to
worry.
Autism now more common among children of color in U.S.
By Mike Stobbe
AP Medical Writer
EW YORK — For the first time,
autism is being diagnosed more
frequently in Black and Hispanic
children than in white kids in the U.S.,
according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC).
Among all U.S. 8-year-olds, 1 in 36 had
autism in 2020, the CDC estimated. That’s
up from 1 in 44 two years earlier.
N
But the rate rose faster for children of
color than for white kids. The new
estimates suggest that about 3% of Black,
Hispanic, and Asian or Pacific Islander
children have an autism diagnosis,
compared with about 2% of white kids.
That’s a contrast to the past, when
autism was most commonly diagnosed in
white kids — usually in middle- or
upper-income families with the means to
go to autism specialists. As recently as
2010, white kids were deemed 30% more
likely to be diagnosed with autism than
Black children and 50% more likely than
Hispanic children.
Experts attributed the change to
improved screening and autism services
for all kids, and to increased awareness
and advocacy for Black and Hispanic
families.
The increase is from “this rush to catch
up,” said David Mandell, a University of
Pennsylvania psychiatry professor.
Continued on page 9
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