To the delight of introverts everywhere, a robot cat waiter has debuted at CES, meaning we could soon see the end of awkward small talk and obsequious tip-baiting from human serving staff.
Called BellaBot (not to be confused with the Bellabeat wearables company), it’s made by a Chinese company called PuduTech and is a cuter version of the original PuduBot that just moved trays of food around the restaurant floor.
BellaBot has four food trays, each capable of holding up to 10KG of food. The staff tell the robot where to take the food and it trundles off, although how you stop people taking food meant for other tables isn’t clear.
Adorably, BellaBot does a little meow to get your attention when it arrives at your table, as if you wouldn’t notice a giant serving robot with an animated cat face otherwise. You can even fuss its ears, to which it apparently responds positively about the temperature of your hands (?!) before getting annoyed because it needs to get on with its job.
While some people will no doubt be concerned about another type of robot looking to take human jobs, it’s apparently aimed at the Chinese market, where restaurants struggle to hire enough waiting staff.
We’d still take an actual cat café over this, though. [BBC News]
This post originally appeared on Gizmodo UK, which is gobbling up the news in a different timezone.