Woohoo Restaurant Dubai
Woohoo invites you to “dine in the future” with an AI-powered restaurant concept built with SP Grid
When content creation, system design and integration specialists Vivid Studio got the call about a new AI-themed restaurant, they knew it would be a unique and fun project. Woohoo, located in Downtown Dubai, utilises artificial intelligence, interactive visuals and creative storytelling to transform the dining experience into something extraordinary. Led by the AI-powered culinary mind of Chef Aiman, Woohoo is built around the concept of humans and AI working together in harmony. Chef Aiman creates the menu, which is prepared by highly-trained chefs and delivered by waiting staff to lucky guests who dine in an AI-inspired environment, surrounded by visual content that is masterminded by AI.
“The owner of the restaurant and the owner of Vivid Studio collaborated on this idea of an AI chef and restaurant and played around with ideas of how the concept might work,” explains Yuri Stranyov, lead engineer at Vivid Studio. “We had already been using SP, and more recently SP Grid, in our own virtual production studio, so when it came to thinking about the ‘brain’ that would be in the middle of all the lighting, audio and video, I knew SP Grid was the best data management solution available.”
The vision, which encompasses lighting elements, large-scale LED visuals and spatial audio, was to have a restaurant where these experience elements are controlled by AI. “The restaurant’s AI agent does the set-up for the day, choosing the order and timing of the different visual and audio elements, which we refer to as ‘parallel universes’,” continues Stranyov. “Together with the Stage Precision team, we wrote a custom plug-in with SP Grid’s Python-scripting features to connect the AI-agent to the AVLM workflow, allowing it to manage the day-to-day running of the restaurant system.”
The system comprises eight media servers that play a series of custom content, large LED screens throughout the restaurant, lighting elements and a network of 46 loudspeakers, which use TiMax spatial audio processing to create an immersive audio experience.
The AI agent ensures a ‘uniqueness’ to the order of the day’s content, and even creates its own, AI-generated content whilst the restaurant is closed overnight. This content is then reviewed by the team before being included in the library of visuals and audio that the AI agent can select from. Whilst AI might be running the systems, it was down to the Vivid Studio team to build the robust server system and marry together hardware and software. SP Grid was the canvas on which this incredible system was built.
From the beginning ideation and experimentation phase, Yuri built everything within SP Grid. “The whole logic was created in Grid Studio initially, where we built the workflows and set up state machine calendars,” explains Stranyov. “It is convenient, and the user experience for me setting it up is very much based on human logic. You connect things together, and it works. If it doesn’t work, it’s easy to change things, and if you need to make something work together, programming is much easier than you would expect.”
For both the AI-agent integration and the ChamSys lighting system, Vivid Studio made good use of SP Grid’s low-code/no-code environment to create custom plug-ins to bring these AVLM elements into the master control system, as Stranyov confirms: “For people who can’t code, there is the possibility of building real custom solutions easily with SP Grid.”
The restaurant, although largely controlled by AI, is staffed by humans, and a human-friendly user interface for simplified control of the AVLM system required Vivid Studio to use the custom UI creation tools within SP Grid. “This was my first time building any kind of UI, and SP Grid made it easier than I could have imagined,” says Stranyov. “Custom variables can be dragged across and appear as UIs. Sliders, triggers and buttons just look great and work perfectly. It’s really user-friendly to create these in Grid Viewer iPad app, which we could do in advance in the studio before moving on-site.” At the restaurant, a large touchscreen displays the UI for staff members to switch on the system or override the AI-powered sequence in case of DJ nights and special events.
SP Grid’s unique licensing system, which allows users to add credits as their projects grow in complexity, is another standout feature of Yuri and the Vivid Studio team, facilitating a fairer and more equal route to creating exciting AVLM environments. “It’s one of the best things I’ve seen in our industry,” says Stranyov. “You pay for exactly the connections and devices you need to use, and this kind of licensing is very attractive both to and to our customers. It’s the first time I’ve seen it in the multimedia world, and it’s definitely the way forward.”
SP Grid not only makes experience building more intuitive, user-friendly and cost-effective; other notable features have further solidified Vivid Studio’s opinion of SP Grid as a fail-safe tool. Grid Gateway provides remote monitoring tools, allowing Yuri to stay informed of system stats and performance, whilst the Stage Precision Slack support channel has proven invaluable for real-time troubleshooting. Response from the Stage Precision team is almost immediate, meaning any fixes can be made quickly to keep the restaurant experience running smoothly.
What began as a single AI character of Chef Aiman has transformed into a complete dining experience that is only set to continue evolving. Lighting, audio and visuals cycle through different ‘parallel universes’ at the will of the restaurant’s own AI-agent. SP Grid acts as the single point of control and automation for the AVLM system, taking commands from the AI agent to trigger different sequences.
Looking to the future, Woohoo and Vivid Studio will continue building the system and exploring the possibilities of AI agent automation and SP Grid. The creation of different user interfaces for different users, such as DJs, facilities staff and cleaners, is also a next step in the evolution of this installation.
“SP Grid touches every element of the Woohoo project,” remarks Stranyov. “From the restaurant experience control, to using SP in our VR studio to create podcast episodes with Chef Aiman, it plays a crucial role at Woohoo. It’s flexible, and it can pretty much handle anything you want it to. There’s nothing better than SP Grid for building these experiences.”