Watch: Have you met Letterkenny's robotic waiter? Now give it a name

A renowned restaurant has found an ingenious way to compensate for staff shortages in the catering industry.

Kelly's Diner is using technology that would not be out of place in Silicon Valley! The restaurant, based at Mountain Top, Letterkenny, went viral on social media after customers started sharing photographs and videos of its new robotic waiter.

The robotic waiter is proving a big hit with customers in the award-winning diner and customers will get a chance to help name the robot in the next few days, keep an eye out on Kelly's Facebook page.

The robots are powered by artificial intelligence (AI), which has computed every table within the diner into its software so that the robot can bring food and drinks to tables without any hassle whatsoever.

“We were looking for something out there that could help our staff with the day-to-day workload by implementing other tools to make their job easier," said Máirtín Kelly of Kelly’s.

“It’s about helping staff work smarter and not harder. We are very electronic-based in terms of our ordering systems, so when people take an order (or customers can order themselves via a QR code) from your table it goes straight to the kitchen and the robots bring it out then. So, staff only have to worry about the customer. We've had to put on extra staff on to help because of how busy we are right now.”

Máirtín loves the efficiency that the robots bring to the workplace as everything runs very smoothly with their newest recruits. They also have sensors that take into account their surroundings, so they don’t bump into people and objects.

“If you walk in front of them, they will stop, or if something is in the way, they will bypass it. It is like one of these autonomous cars, they are a very intelligent piece of kit,” he said.

However, Máirtín is at pains to point out that this latest technological advancement won’t take away people’s jobs.

“The point we want to get through to people is that jobs aren’t being affected by this, it’s just to improve the quality of our service,” he said. “We would never replace human interaction with our customers. In fact, we have more staff than we had this time last year

"Patrons have been dumbfounded when they see the robot in action, it can sign happy birthday to customers and also says 'thanks' and 'goodbye'. We had a table of people the last night and there were people from America and Dublin and they couldn’t believe that they walked into a diner in the middle of rural Ireland and there are this bouyo running around the place! Donegal already has so much going for it, and now it has added two more attractions."