The owner of robots that mass produce ready-to-eat burgers boasts his machines were built to replace fast-food workers.

Alexandros Vardakostas, co-founder of a company called Momentum Machines, told business news website Xconomy his "device isn't meant to make employees more efficient. It's meant to completely obviate them."

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In other words, the burger-making machine is going to get fast food workers fired.

Just how many fast food workers could lose their jobs if Momentum Machines' hamburger making robot -- essentially a compact assembly line that mass produces burgers -- catches on with MacDonald's and the fast food industry?

At McDonald's, at least four employees are assigned to make hamburgers.

Vardakostas said his hamburger-making robot can get rid of three of these humans plus all of the huge overhead costs such as training, unemployment, worker's compensation that come with employing them.

He boasts his robots do everything human employees can do, "except better."

The robot can assemble 360 hamburgers per hour or one burger every 10 seconds. 

One conveyor on the robot carries patties through a gas grill. Another conveyor deposits tomatoes, onions, lettuce, and pickles atop a bun.

All these ingredients are assembled into the finished burger at the machine's exit chute, which even wraps the finished burger.

Vardakostas said the fast food industry is going to make a killing by using his hamburger-making robots.

He estimates his robots could save fast-food companies such as McDonald's up to US$90,000 per franchise per year, or a massive US$9 billion throughout the U.S.

He argued the financial and competitive arguments for purchasing his robots is compelling.

"We think it would be hard to compete if you don't have a robot," he said.

Momentum Machines hopes to install 1,500 of its robots by 2017.

And what about those thousands of poor employees that'll lose their jobs to hamburger-making robots?

Momentum Machines has this answer on its website:

"We want to help the people who may transition to a new job as a result of our technology the best way we know how: education. Our goal is to offer discounted technical training to any former line cook of a restaurant that uses our device."

Momentum Machines alleges that the "issue of machines and job displacement has been around for centuries and economists generally accept that technology like ours actually causes an increase in employment."

Tell that to the guys at the unemployment line.