Fully automated restaurant boom in China

A Japanese Twitter user has sparked an online debate over video footage of a fully-automated Chinese restaurant.

The coverage of the unnamed (and apparently unstaffed) venue in Chinese Shenzhen showed a diner choosing a noodle dish from a touch-screen menu, paying for the meal electronically, receiving it from a robot arm, and dining on a table that automatically retracts to receive waste.

Japanese netizens were quick to express concerns at the concept of dining over a hidden trash can – not only in terms of hygiene and smell, but also for the potential of losing keys or a mobile phone, and as to whether the trash would be properly separated for recycling.

A report called the restaurant a sign of the impending robot apocalypse, and wondered if the restaurant bill was a contribution to an electronic uprising to usurp humanity.