Annual Cocktail Robot Awards

ROBOEXOTICA, the annual cocktailrobotics festival (to be held dec. 5th-9th in Museumsquartier Vienna) features the 8th Annual Cocktail Robot Awards (ACRA). Trophies are awarded in five categories, among them mixing and serving cocktails as well as lighting cigarettes and cocktail conversation. Entries welcome! Among the winners of 2005 was David Calkins, president of the Robotics Society of America and founder of Robogames. There is also a related post on SHIFZ-Blog.

Comments

Re:cocktailrobotics

[shifzr]

interestingly, the first robot arm to be programmed to mix and offer drinks (and "dance") was assembled by Honeybee Robotics in the 1980s, as far as i know.
Honeybee DO do a lot of stuff for NASA it seems.
Alas, they don't feature "Ernie" on their webappearance anymore - but they sent us a vhs-video-tape with promo and news-coverage from the 80s, back in 2002, when i found Ernie on the web.
[When we "invented" cocktailrobotics in 1999, no rocketscience was involved though ;)]

A more elagnt solution: the pianocktail

[rduke15]

Boris Vian, the renowned member of the "College de pataphysique" (which also appears to have a London branch), suggested a much more elegant solution for a cocktail robot in the opening chapter of Foam of the daze (L'Ecume des jours): the pianocktail

Here is an excerpt, taken from this page:

'Would you like a drink first?' asked Colin. 'I've finished my pianocktail and we could try it out.'
 
'Does it really work?' asked Chick.
 
'Of course it does. I had a hard job perfecting it, but the finished result is beyond my wildest dreams. When I played the Black and Tan Fantasy I got a really fantastic concoction.'
 
'How does it work?' asked Chick.
 
'For each note,' said Colin, 'there's a corresponding drink - either a wine, spirit, liqueur or fruit juice. The loud pedal puts in egg flip and the soft pedal adds ice. For soda you play a cadenza in F sharp. The quantities depend on how long a note is held - you get the sixteenth of a measure for a hemidemisemiquaver; a whole measure for a black note; and four measures for a semibreve. When you play a slow tune, then tone comes into control too to prevent the amounts growing too large and the drink getting too big for a cocktail - but the alcoholic content remains unchanged. And, depending on the length of the tune, you can, if you like, vary the measures used, reducing them, say, to a hundredth in order to get a drink taking advantage of all the harmonics, by means of an adjustment on the side.'
 
'It's a bit complicated,' said Chick.
 
'The whole thing is controlled by electrical contacts and relays. I won't go into all the technicalities because you know all about them anyway. And, besides, the piano itself really works.'
 
'It's wonderful,' said Chick.
 
'Only one thing still worries me,' said Colin, 'and that's the loud pedal and the egg flip. I had to put in a special gear system because if you play something too hot, lumps of omelette fall into the glass, and they're rather hard to swallow. I've still got a little bit of modification to do there. But it's all right if you're careful. And for a dash of fresh cream, you add a chord in G major.'
 
'I'm going to try an improvisation on Loveless Love,' said Chick. 'That should be crazy.'
 
'It's still in the junk room that I use as my workshop,' said Colin, 'because the guard plates aren't screwed down yet. Come in there with me. I'll set it for two cocktails of about seventy-five milligallons each to start with.'
 
Chick sat at the piano. When he'd reached the end of the tune a section of the front panel came down with a sharp click and a row of glasses appeared. Two of them were brimming with an appetizing mixture.
 
'You scared me,' said Colin. 'You played a wrong note once. Luckily it was only in the harmonization.'
 
'You don't mean to say that that comes into it too?' said Chick.
 
'Not always,' said Colin. 'That would make it too elaborate. So we just give it a few passing acknowledgements. Now drink up-and we'll go and eat.'