Ex-SpaceX Engineers Create Robot Pizza Chef That Serves Up Pies In 5 Minutes
By Ell Ko, 27 Dec 2021
As the realm of automation encroaches, one of mankind’s most important inventions has been taken along for the ride: pizza.
Three former SpaceX engineers—Benson Tsai, Brian Langone, and James Wahawisan—developed their own pizza-chef-robot, which is capable of creating one of these delicious pies in just under five minutes.
And another of the employees at fittingly-named establishment Stellar Pizza is Ted Cizma, who used to be the executive chef at SpaceX. Around 23 other former SpaceX employees were involved in the creation of this robot.
Business Insider details the process: Starting with a ball of homemade pizza dough, the machine presses it into the round base before adding sauce and other toppings. Then, this is baked to glory in one of the machine’s own ovens.
Two basic options are up for grabs, the classic pepperoni or supreme. Plus, customers can opt to add extra toppings like bacon and olives.
Stellar Pizza’s robot chef is small enough to fit in the back of a truck, per Interesting Engineering. Besides being a space-saver in pizza restaurants and small corner joints, it also means that the machine can be deployed to, well, anywhere that’s in need of a pizza, it seems.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Stellar Pizza will be launching in Los Angeles early next year, followed by plans for other locations such as San Diego and Texas.
[via Interesting Engineering, cover image via Stellar Pizza]