Chinese restaurant owner ditches human waiters for robots

Robots deliver food at this Chinese restaurant. (YouTube/ODN)

A restaurant owner in China is opting to save on employee wages by foregoing traditional servers and using robots instead.

The eatery, located in a shopping mall in Ningbo, a city in China's northeastern Zhejiang province, has become a big tourist draw with its futuristic waitstaff.

Each robot costs over $9,400 but owner Lu Dike insists that he is still saving money over the long term, reports the Daily Mail.

The automated bots take orders, and even speak to customers with a 40 phrase Mandarin Chinese vocabulary. Each machine travels through the small eatery using an optical sensing system that is designed that keeps them from running into walls or people.

The robots, which have a lifespan of about five years and run on a rechargeable battery that lasts up to eight hours.

Lu claims he is often asks if the bots up for sale.

“I get asked at least once a day if I'm prepared to sell one of them. Who knows? Maybe it might be a good sideline,” the restaurant owner said.

Check out the food-bots in action.