Page 7 - IAV Digital Magazine #565

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
Barista Robot That Can Make 20 Drinks & Manage Coffee Shops On Duty In S. Korea
By Saqib Shah
Tech hipsters, brace your digital souls. A robot barista could be whipping up your daily flat white at a Silicon Roundabout cof- fee shop in the near future.
A droid that can make 20 different drinks to order, including custom coffees, has been launched in South Korea by the country’s biggest phone network, SK Telecom.
The AI Barista Robot, which
uses a robotic arm powered by “advanced artifi- cial intelligence”, can even close your cup lid when serving bever- ages, according to its creators.
This firm wants to be the leader in coffee-
making robots in the next five years as it looks to make “unmanned” cafes a reality, it said. The company’s partner on the new bot, fellow South Korean
firm Dooson Robotics, already sells its
robotic systems in Western Europe and North America.
Not content with creaming the latte-making duties into its repertoire, the barista robot can also be equipped with surveillance cameras to help out with security.
As its name implies, the new beverage-bot relies on artificial intelligence to complete tasks. Its computer brain can crunch moun- tains of data, according to SK
Telecom, allowing it to help manage entire coffee store chains.
The machine can purportedly moni- tor the coffee- shop sales to help evaluate profits across multiple branch- es. It is said to identify popular menu items, raw material con- sumption and equipment status in real time. The bot then compiles and sends all this info to store own- ers through a mobile app – and it can supposedly do all of this
analysis while crafting you a mean-looking macha latte.
Alongside automating the daily grind of run- ning a coffee- shop businesses, SK Telecom believes robots can make life more convenient for customers.
Come to think of it, waking up to a robot-brewed cof- fee every morning doesn’t sound that bad – espe- cially if the droid cleans up after- wards. The idea of a robot barista that never mess- es up your order, doesn’t idly chat to you during your morning com- mute, or try to flirt with you may also sound appealing. Though, the emergence of the machine will probably set off alarm bells for cafe workers.
But, this isn’t the only robotic cof- fee maker in town. A startup called Artly uses bot baristas that it
claims can “make a perfect cup of coffee” using computer vision algorithms at sev- eral coffee store locations across the US West Coast, according to reports from last year. A simi- lar droid is
also serving cof- fee at train sta- tions in Singapore, cour- tesy of a collabo- ration between local retail man- agement and food and drinks companies.
Beyond hot brews, tech start- ups have also developed robotic arms to flip ham- burgers at fast food joints, auto- mated pizza- cooking stations, and sushi-making machines that can create nigiri, maki and omusubi (rice balls) on-demand. Feels like stu- dents will soon need to think a lit- tle harder to find their next holiday job.
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine