A Robotic Colonel Harland Sanders Has Taken Over KFC's Drive-Thru

In honor of National Fried Chicken Day, KFC brought back its founder, Colonel Harland Sanders, in the form of a futuristic drive-thru robot named H.A.R.L.A.N.D. (Human Assisted Robotic Linguistic Animatronic Networked Device).

According to the press release, the technology uses speech recognition, artificial intelligence, and "text-to-speech techniques," which allows H.A.R.L.A.N.D. to repeat whatever the drive-thru operator speaks.

"We suspect drive-thru designers are heralding the H.A.R.L.A.N.D. technology as the greatest industry advancement since the addition of two-way communication itself," George Felix, director of advertising at KFC US, said in a statement. "Not only do we have a real person as our historic brand icon, but now we have the ability to bring that real person back as a real robot. The future is now."

In a video created by Funny or Die, you can see the robotic Colonel Sanders in action.

Even if you can't experience H.A.R.L.A.N.D. first-hand, Colonel Sanders still wants to wish you a happy Fried Chicken Day through a video posted on YouTube.

To read about 10 things you didn't know about KFC, click here.