What are you having? Robots in the service industry

Some­thing that used to be an idea only in movies – robots inter­act­ing with humans in a ser­vice capac­i­ty – is becom­ing more preva­lent in society.

Though we may not real­ize it, we inter­act with ser­vice robots every day. When we go through the self-check­out lane at the gro­cery store, that is a robot. When we use a tick­et kiosk at the movie the­ater, that is a robot. Even when we order a piz­za online, we are still inter­act­ing with a robot, of sorts.

Now, robots are being designed to serve drinks at local bars and cof­fee shops. A Texas-based com­pa­ny, Brig­go Cof­fee, believes that robot­ic baris­tas can bring a lev­el of accu­ra­cy and pre­ci­sion to cof­fee that is not pos­si­ble for human workers.

The com­pa­ny believes that con­sis­ten­cy with each drink, along with remote order­ing and per­son­al­iza­tion, will be agree­able to customers.

That kind of con­sis­ten­cy can also be help­ful to the bar­tend­ing indus­try, where a long pour or a short pour can be the dif­fer­ence between a great drink and one that is too much to handle.

MIT’s Sens­able City Lab is one of the group work­ing to per­fect the robot­ic bar­tender. The robot can not only pour an accu­rate drink, it can also slice a lemon and shake a cock­tail shak­er like any human bartender. 

What’s good about both of these ser­vice robots? They don’t fatigue, they don’t need breaks and they don’t need vaca­tions or days off.

While indus­tri­al robots won’t be able to pour you a cock­tail or serve you a cof­fee any­time soon, they can use their arms to per­form many pick and place func­tions with stun­ning accu­ra­cy. Once again, like these ser­vice robots, indus­tri­al pick and place robots don’t fatigue.

Sev­er­al mod­els, includ­ing the Fanuc M‑1iA, the Motoman DIA10 and the KUKA KR6, are avail­able through Robots​.com for inte­gra­tion.

Robots​.com, a cer­ti­fied inte­gra­tor for Fanuc, Motoman, ABB, Uni­ver­sal Robots, and KUKA, will work with cus­tomers to design a pick and place sys­tem that is ver­sa­tile and can be repro­grammed to per­form sev­er­al dif­fer­ent appli­ca­tions. For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact Robots​.com at 877−762−6881.