The new AI-themed restaurant Woohoo in Downtown Dubai is combining immersive AV and automation with human hospitality in a concept built around collaboration between people and artificial intelligence.
Developed by the experience design and integration firm Vivid Studio, the venue centers on an AI persona named Chef Aiman. The system generates menu concepts and influences the restaurant’s visual and audio environment, while human chefs prepare dishes and staff serve guests inside a space defined by large-scale LED visuals, lighting effects, and spatial audio.
At the core of the deployment is SP Grid from Stage Precision, a unified control platform for the restaurant’s audio, video, lighting, and media (AVLM) systems. According to Yuri Stranyov, lead engineer at Vivid Studio, the platform serves as the “brain” that links lighting, audio, and video into a synchronized workflow.
The installation includes eight media servers driving content across LED displays, lighting fixtures and a network of 46 loudspeakers using TiMax spatial audio processing. The restaurant’s AI agent determines the sequencing of themed content environments – referred to as “parallel universes” – and can generate new visual and audio assets overnight for review before inclusion in the active library.
To connect the AI agent to the AVLM infrastructure, Vivid Studio developed a custom plug-in using SP Grid’s Python scripting tools. Workflows and state-machine calendars were built in Grid Studio prior to on-site deployment. The low-code environment was also used to integrate a ChamSys lighting system and to create user interfaces for staff, including a touchscreen that allows employees to start the system or override automated sequences during special events.
Remote monitoring is handled through Grid Gateway tools, with direct support from Stage Precision, enabling real-time troubleshooting when required.
While AI governs the sequencing of the environment, the concept positions automation as an enhancement to, rather than a replacement for, human-led service.