RELATED WORK
A. Need of Automation in Restaurant Sector
The Hospitality industry especially the restaurant sectors are gaining a rising importance worldwide as they have
been supporting the economy for decades. The usual procedure used for food ordering in restaurants is a manual process.
It involves the waiters noting down the menu from customers, transferring the orders to the kitchen, serving the menu,
and finally preparing bills. This process even though looks simple, is prone to human errors while note making & delays
involved. So the customers end-up with an unsatisfactory experience [1].
In this revolutionized world people are crazy about latest technologies and automating their routine tasks.
Considering this fact and with an aim to improve efficiency & reduce errors in conventional food ordering system, new
technologies and approaches are introduced to automate the conventional food ordering process [1]. The wireless food
ordering systems such as WOS [5], i-menu [4] FIWOS [2], are some them. These all systems are PDA (Personal digital
assistants) based systems. In the PDA based system, the customers or waiters key in ordering process. When order
making completes, these PDAs are to be collected by the waiters to be used by other customers. PDAs are small and
portable devices. With wireless technology, the communication between the server and PDA is feasible [2].
B. Limitations in PDA based Food Ordering Systems
Even though the PDA based system provided a better option to conventional food ordering system they possess
some limitations:
A number of PDAs are to be prepared to serve the number of customers during peak hours. Thus increasing the
restaurant expenditures [2].
PDAs do not provide provision to order from workplace. Thus the customer has to be physically present in restaurant
to place order [6].
It lacks real time feedback between restaurant owner and customers [2].
Pose health problems as the PDAs are to be shared with public customers. If any customer is suffering from
infectious disease like flu, then the other customers using the same PDA are exposed to similar health hazards.
The user interface consist only textual information. UI has become unattractive and uninformative due to lack of
images [6].