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Robotic Bartender Assembles Your Drink, Monitors Alcohol Consumption
First time accepted submitter Sabine Hauert writes in with news about a robotic bartending system called Makr Shakr. "You're at a busy bar. You order your personalized cocktail through a smart phone app; a drink dispenser measures out the beverage according to your instructions and a Kuka robotic arm give it a shake (or stir), while another garnishes it with a slice of lemon; the made-to-order concoction is delivered to your waiting hand via a slick little ten-lane conveyor belt. The 'mixology system' tracks your order from start to finish: a large display behind the bar shows you the number of drinks ahead of yours in the queue, the current wait time, and lets you know when your drink is ready to be picked up. It also shows you what's popular to drink tonight among both the ladies and the gents in the crowd, and lets you influence drinking trends in real-time by incorporating your suggested tweaks on popular recipes."
Head hanging low, the ex-bartender heads down to the welfare office to apply for the entitlement. Your cheap night at the bar is followed by an enormous tax bill.
Will it pretend to ignore you while hitting on a co-ed at the end of the bar? I really won't feel comfortable unless it tries to short me change and hope I'm too drunk to notice, then give me a dirty look when I skimp on the tip.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
so how does it know that that drink you just ordered did not get handed to your new friend?
One of these systems were in action at Google I/O After Hours Party last night. Pretty neat.
Can it do a age check?
Have gnu, will travel.
I thought the last story said we had 30 years before this happens.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
that's pretty ignorant
sad, I agree.
ignorant on multiple levels.
seemingly random malicious hate is pervasive.
people make hateful comments without considering their impact.
others do it deliberately, but it's pretty much impossible to tell which is which.
are you innocently posting something inappropriate, or are you a racist with an agenda?
epic win.
I have some friends who are chefs. Have gotten comps from the kitchen.
As long as it understands "Keep 'em coming".
Umm, god doesn't exist, so your statement is null.
Ok, this might be useful at the airport or something. But I actually like to talk to the bartenders at my favorite bars.
I think "Makr Shakr" might not be the right name for an alcoholic beverage-related product. It sounds vaguely Arabic, and the Arab world still has Prohibition.
That's OK, we're planning to sell them the militarised version of this robot, the Mastr Blastr.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Jesus Christ on a stick! an iPhone app? Who the fuck wants to order drinks with a motherfucking iPhone app? What's wrong with using my god damned voice to order my fucking drinks? Who wants to know how many other drinks and in the fucking queue? Do you really think I want to know what horse piss the other doucebags are putting in their drinks?
What makes you imagine I want some machine tracking my drinking habits, much less to be made aware of it?
# profanity off
Why would I want to go to a BAR to avoid SOCIAL INTERACTION with OTHER PEOPLE?
I prefer my drinks made by human beings, who I can thankfully tip for pouring my two fingers of bourbon to three fingers, and also show my appreciation with a smile and conversation. Anything other than a human is just a vending machine. Remember that the next time you're out, and tip generously. They don't make much money.
Sounds like a liability. "That car accident wasn't my fault. That particular robotic bartender always manages my alcohol intake perfectly, so it is the one at fault for screwing up and letting me drink a little too much, too fast. It was programmed to cut me off one drink sooner but a bug let it give me one more drink, and made me t-bone a taxi full of nuns on vacation."
I'll take the bartender I know, who pours me a beer the moment I walk in the door and makes sure I have a ride on the rare occasion when I allow myself to get carried away. He's a better bullshitter than any robot I've met, too.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
no, tepples is cool, he's been around a while and has good thoughts. a tone-deaf joke perhaps, but not ill-intentioned.
I like the my-family-member-owns-this-bar experience. They make you think you're going to actually get to pay one of these days, but PSYCHE! Dropping another free meal on you.
"lets you influence drinking trends in real-time by incorporating your suggested tweaks on popular recipes."
Roofie for the cute blonde girl
If drinking alcohol is so abhorred by god, then why didn't he just make us immune to it? If we didn't feel the effects, then we wouldn't drink it. Man, that god bloke is seriously stupid - he even wired our retinas back-to-front and gave us badly designed backs for standing upright.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
In my 36 years of life, I have never drunk even one drop of alcohol. Don't blame God for your own lack of willpower.
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
I don't see anything wrong with drinking alcohol (in moderation) and see no reason to abstain, especially when human society has used brewing for thousands of years to make water safe to drink.
I don't blame god for anything as he's clearly some kind of fairy story to scare kids - similar to the boogeyman.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
So you admit that to drink or not to drink is a matter of choice. Thus your reasoning in your sentence, "If we didn't feel the effects, then we wouldn't drink it" is false.
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
Actually, you probably have. If you've ever used mouthwash, drank soda, ate bread, or been breathed on by someone who is drunk, you probably have imbibed at least a drop's worth of alcohol. These days, even pumping gas would get you over that threshold.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Everything we do is a matter of choice. I think the idea of some kind of trickster god is abhorrent - he makes creatures that enjoy the effects of alcohol and then tells them (in some versions) that they're not allowed to drink it.
It's like the garden of Eden: eat whatever you want, but not THAT tree over there. That tree - the one I'm pointing at. It's got the most delicious fruit that will immediately give you knowledge, but I forbid it. No, not the one on the left - this one here. It sure looks tasty, but NO!
And he was saying that to a woman! He was either extremely stupid or really spiteful.
Also, if alcohol had no effect on humans, would it still be banned in some religions? Is it inherently evil, or is this a case of god creating a specific effect just to fuck with us?
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
tip it a few hexadecimals in knowledge to jump ahead in the queue?
Sure, its fun to watch. just remember when the first coffee was brewed 30 years ago by a machine we all stood in wonderment at what appeared to be a robot future. Turns out the final product sitting in the breakroom of most offices grinds out a dull black water, comes in a box form factor, and occasionally shits cups all over the floor. its generally avoided by all but a fanatic few who pump 60 cents into it each morning and have never had a cup of starbucks. "Flair" and attractiveness are what make a bartender in many situations, same as a barista. Speaking as a former bartender, I have a few problems with this layout:
its inefficient: we move drinks, we look good doing it, we do NOT spill the product across the cup from the shaker as the machines did, for a number of reasons. 1. your inventory on the floor costs you money and customers. 2. all those sugary mixed drinks become a hellish glue to clean up eventually. 3. Fruit flies multiply inexorably with spillage and get you shut down by the health department/any competing bar that lodges a complaint very quickly. 4. customers dont want wet sticky plastic cups.
its a static load: mixes are pre-portioned, all drinks must be shaken, garnish is not provided. this is basically an electronically assembled pre-mix cocktail that will invariably piss off 2-3 customers an hour with its inability to do 'doubles' or 'sidecars' or any other kitshy stuff customers just want out of habit. a few regulars might take double lime, no lime, or float a splash of cranberry juice. ive had to do beer-mosas on sunday when normally mimosas suffice. beermosa is not in the black book where i presume the machines recipes are sourced.
account for fault conditions: what if we cant make a drink anymore? you're still selling so you need to improvise. offer other options to customers, listen to what they like, be creative and come up with something they will enjoy. "We dont do that" or "Empty" is the fastest way to lose a bar.
that having been said: where do i want this machine? I want it on saturday night at the front of the bar with a preset load of cocktails that people commonly order that, normally, i pour out of a mix. tequila sunrise, margarita, any mixed sugary shot, etc...I also might want it to make drinks that are very dangerous (check out the blue blazer sometime, it requires pouring flaming bourbon between two steel mugs to mix it.), and handle volatile liquors that some bars cannot procure insurance for (151 requires additional fire insurance for example.) im not sure i want it slinging beer. not that it cant, just that beer has a strange rate of return where ive found often customers want to "switch" because they dont like a certain new craft brew theyre trying.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I had no hate in mind. It just made me think of Abu Bakr.
All these comments and not one single reference to The FIfth Element's bartender in the ship port. ... YOU WANT SOME MORE?
Until they make a robot you can see commiserates with you when you tell him about how you're only there because your wife's mother's in town, or her aunt Flo is visiting and she wants you to go down on her... and convince you he truly understands, and that he's been there himself... the bar tender's job is safe. Also, until a robot can determine you're drunk, and ensure it's not serving booze to an under-age drinker... etc., this is just a toy.
In the era of ubiquitous data mining, all those situations are knowable, and a display or speaker will be able to specially craft the exact phrase you want to hear, but aren't consciously aware of what you want to hear.
More Twoson than Cupertino
...just an augmentation. And it neatly avoids the uncanny valley by not even remotely resembling our upright, bipedal, bi-laterally symmetric physiognomy. My friend owns three bars here in the old pueblo -- a college-centric meat market within stumbling distance of the UofA campus, a Cheers-type bar&grill in one of the most affluent residential districts in the city, and a trendy techno bar on 4th Avenue, which is Tucson's own Haight-Ashbury. The reception this system would get would largely depend on how it is wrapped for the patrons at each of these uniquely distinctive venues. I could see it being tucked away out of sight at the bar&grill, delivering the drinks to a mini-skirted waitress for the last mile delivery to the patron. Patrons at the bar&grill go there for (good!) food and drink, but also to schmooze with wealthy UofA alumni who have returned to their college town to dabble in local university and city politics. They will take passing notice of the pretty girl delivering their cocktails, but would not be interested in the slightest about the details of the guy (or robot) mixing their drinks. Ditto the meat market: patrons at the meat market are there to score, and my friend deliberately hires attractive female servers exclusively from the local topless clubs' labor pool to set the right kind of ambiance. It probably wouldn't have to be out of sight there, just out of harm's way. But it would probably pay-off in spades at the techno bar. Every techno trend on the planet eventually makes its way through a college town, and this system would be de rigueur, along with the live dub-step acts and wall-sized projection screens full of anime and machinima.
I think this system could have a beneficial ROI in these three diverse venues, so it could probably be beneficial in many others, as long as the proprietor incorporates it in a way that doesn't annoy his regular patrons or scare off potential ones.