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Chipotle Pilots Avocado-Processing Robot

Today, Chipotle unveiled Autocado, an avocado-processing prototype that cuts, cores, and peels avocados before they are hand mashed to create the restaurant's guacamole. The prototype, developed in collaboration with robotics company Vebu, is being tested at the Chipotle Cultivate Center in Irvine, California.

The machine is loaded with up to 25 pounds of ripe avocados that is then halved, cored, peeled, and cut before being deposited into a bowl for final manual processing. The “cobot”—a computer-controlled robot that works with a human worker—could reduce guacamole prep by up to 50 percent, according to Chipotle.

"We are committed to exploring collaborative robotics to drive efficiencies and ease pain points for our employees," said Curt Garner, chief customer and technology officer at Chipotle, in a statement. "The intensive labor of cutting, coring, and scooping avocados could be relieved with Autocado, but we still maintain the essential culinary experience of hand mashing and hand preparing the guacamole to our exacting standards."

Vebu worked closely with Chipotle's training managers to analyze the company's preparation process and identify tasks that are time-consuming and less favorable among crew members.

"Our purpose as a robotic company is to leverage automation technology to give workers more flexibility in their day-to-day work," said Buck Jordan, CEO of Vebu, in a statement. "Autocado has the potential to work alongside Chipotle crew members to create the same, delicious guacamole that Chipotle fans love but more efficiently than ever before."

The next goal for the device is for future iterations of Autocado to use machine learning and sensor fusion to evaluate the quality of the avocados and quantify waste reduction in addition to increasing the efficiency of the cutting, coring, and peeling processes, noted Chipotle.

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