'Now Throw A Party and this Robots will serve you a Cocktail'. Researchers at the MIT Senseable City Lab in collaboration with Coca-Cola and Bacardi Rum have developed Makr Shakr, a robot drink-mixing system unveiled at the Google I/O annual developer conference in San Francisco as the world’s first crowd-controlled robotic bar.
Makr Shakr uses three robot arms with special attachments and a programmable mixing system to make drinks and hand them out by means of a set of conveyor belts. The drink-mixing system uses technology from Coca Cola’s Freestyle beverage dispenser, which can dispense over a hundred different mixtures of sodas.
Users can order their own alcoholic and nonalcoholic drinks using a smartphone app; the robots will make the ordered drink with a bit of standard shaker work using specially designed manipulators and then serve it up while a screen behind them keeps track of the action.
The app also enables users to share connections, recipes and photos on various social networks.
Carlo Ratti, director of the MIT Senseable City Lab, claims that, “The system explores the new dynamics of social creation and consumption – ‘design, make and enjoy’ – allowing users to design their own cocktail creations, while digitally controlled machines transform these designs into reality”.
You can watch the Makr Shakr robot system in action in the video below.
