Build your own drink mixing robot

http://yujiangtham.com/2014/05/25/build-your-very-own-drink-mixing-robot-part-1/

by ytham • 12 years ago

159 53 12 years ago

arm552• 12 years ago

Awesome. I'd really love to see one of these that's good enough to actually use at scale at a large party. This one looks closer than a lot of the others that I've seen. Perhaps higher quality peristaltic pumps (higher flow rate, less noise) in combination with more ingredient chambers would push it over the edge.

fit2rule• 12 years ago

Nice! Still got a ways to catch up with these guys though:

http://www.roboexotica.org/

Includes regularly-scheduled party!

kevinwang• 12 years ago

Wow, this and the OP are incredibly sick.

ytham2• 12 years ago

Thanks for sharing! Really cool drink robots in the link! :)

markbao2• 12 years ago

Very cool! From a health perspective, has anyone looked into whether these homemade machines for food/drink are safe for consumption? I see that the tubing in the materials list is FDA-approved, but has there been any work done on the other stuff? And with alcohol specifically, are there any potential complications?

vacri• 12 years ago

The liquid should not touch anything outside of the tubing or tubing interconnects, so it shouldn't matter so much if the parts don't meet FDA requirements.

arm552• 12 years ago

One of the large benefits of peristaltic pumps is that the only thing that the liquid touches is the tube.

markbao2• 12 years ago

Ah, that's great. For those wondering how: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Peristaltic_pump.gif

zurn• 12 years ago

It needs some kind of cleaning cycle (unless all your ingredients are hard liquor...)

changdizzle• 12 years ago

awesome, yujiang! it's been cool to see all the hardware stuff you've been hacking over the past few months, sad i missed this your party (and the bar mixvah)!

joshmn• 12 years ago

This is now my summer project. Thank you!

kokey• 12 years ago

I've always thought some kind of automated drink mixing system would be good for busy inner city cocktail bars. You can still have a bar where people can sit and watch someone mix drinks, but the rest of the venue can be tables with table service. The orders from the tables are taken by a person and gets sent to the kitchen where the drinks are made by machine. This will retain the personal touch of people attending to tables personally, and allow them to serve drinks often, promptly and consistently.

chrissnell2• 12 years ago

I don't mean this in a disrespectful way, but what kinds of drinks are you drinking and where are you drinking them? Yes, a robotic mixer might work in a crappy bar for standard bar drinks like a Rum and Coke, Long Island Iced Tea, etc., but anything beyond the standard pour-and-serve is probably best done by the human touch, especially if you're charging big city prices for them.

That said, there are some places that do use quick mixers to mix up the classics. Garduños, a huge Albuquerque, NM mexican restaurant (as seen in Breaking Bad, season 5!) uses pre-mixed margarita mix from a keg and dispenses it with a typical bartender's soda gun. They've realized that most people who order "well" margaritas aren't that discerning and appreciate the consistency that a factory-mixed 'rita delivers. Garduños serves them by the gallon and the pre-mix saves them lots of bartender time when they're mixing their most popular cocktail.

This would never fly in a nice bar, though. These days, most big city bars are chasing the money and the money is in "craft cocktails". It's all about the ingredients and the customized drinks that are tailored to the customer's preferences. Bartenders are making a big show out of things like twisting a slice of orange peel to release its oils. The presentation is hugely important here and a robotic mixer just doesn't have the right vibe, in my opinion.

ebiester• 12 years ago

That's exactly when to use such a machine. While I appreciate a great cocktail, that's not what I'm getting on the average Saturday night at the dance club. I would prefer a faster cocktail in many of those cases.

petercoolz• 12 years ago

I've seen this argument in many forms. It generally goes: Robots will never be able to do [insert activity here] as well as humans for [insert reason here].

I rather think that this robot is a fantastic v0.01 in what could be the beginning of many hundreds of versions. Some of these future versions will have features that are better than what human bartenders can do, yet, many future versions will still be inferior.

joshcrowder• 12 years ago

I don't agree - Pre mixed drinks are the future. Lots of new bars are brining new ideas to cocktails through pre-mixed drinks. http://whitelyan.com/ Is one of them they only sell pre-mixed drinks because they couldn't be created on the spot.

Mixologists are mainly for show it really doesn't matter if its shaken or stirred.

http://whitelyan.com/assets/menu/white-lyan-drinks-menu-sept...

drzaiusapelord• 12 years ago

I'm not buying the "robots can't make drinks" argument.

Restaurant automation was big in the 1960s and 70s, but it eventually became a flop. The technology mostly worked, but in the end, customers came more for the "culture" of the restaurant or bar. That is, to chat up the waitress, have a short conversation with the bartender, and most importantly, to not feel lonely.

Part of the "big city prices" is the exclusivity that place delivers, not how fine the process for making the current hot drink is.

Restaurants and bars aren't like most businesses. They don't just deliver product. They deliver some sense of shared culture, some sense of exclusivity, and some sense of 'here is where my kind of people belong.' That is also why we mock chain restaurants, some of which deliver perfectly fine food, but are seen as too 'cookie cutter' for the social experience we demand.

I say bring on the robots. I go to a lot of live music shows and waiting on drinks takes far too long and heaven forbid I get the "too cool for you" bartender and his weird douchbaggery on top of the drink I want. Maybe the bartender role will go the way of the elevator operator or travel agent role. Or higher end places will keep it and the rest will have a bartender sysadmin position to make sure everything keeps running, fills up supply, orders everything, calls service, etc.

dclowd9901• 12 years ago

This is stupid. If you've ever actually made a drink, you'll know the only thing a robot can't do that a human can do is peel an orange (maybe, though I'm sure someone could figure that out). I make my old fashioneds and gin and tonics the same way every time. And for a cheaper drink that arrives nearly immediately? A bar like that would be a new favorite hangout.

jahewson• 12 years ago

The actual measuring of drinks is not usually the most time-consuming part of making a cocktail. Squeezing fresh fruit juices, preparing fresh fruit for garnishing and shaking with ice usually take most of the time. There's also muddling and stirring sugar into drinks such as the old fashioned which is popular right now. Plus, a good bartender is pretty fast.

icebraining2• 12 years ago

Why couldn't a machine shake with ice, and even squeeze certain fruits (e.g. oranges, lemons and such)? It certainly seems easier than many existing processes in factory lines.

arethuza• 12 years ago

"Squeezing fresh fruit juices"

Not long ago I watched a bartender making oyster martinis and he was very careful to ring out each oyster to get all of their juicy goodness into the drink :-)

Although I like oysters, I wasn't tempted to try one...

ZoFreX• 12 years ago

Have you ever been to an open bar event? So much faster - it's the payment that slows a regular bar down.

peterwwillis• 12 years ago

This reminds me of airport bars. It seems that recently (I don't fly much) they imposed electronic limiters on the alcohol bottles. The bottles will now only pour one shot at a time and record the number of shots poured. I miss the old days of tipping a bit high and receiving an "erronoeous" over-pour. Some things are just better left to humans, I think...

mithras• 12 years ago

Consider a kickstarter, I'd love to buy one.

kfnn• 12 years ago

Actually, there's one similar, happening now: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/barobot/barobot-a-cockt...

emhart• 12 years ago

And another that ended not long ago: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/partyrobotics/bartendro...

timdorr• 12 years ago

There is one being built out of Atlanta: http://monsieur.co/

They had a successful Kickstarter last year: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/monsieur/monsieur-the-a...

I've had it before. It's pretty good. Makes for a unique rental for parties/events, but a little pricey for my tastes to buy at home. I believe they're going after rich folks with large in-home bars but without time to mix the drinks themselves.

fest• 12 years ago

Aren't the linked peristaltic pumps a little bit too slow for this purpose? It would take 3 minutes to fill 300ml of soft drink on top of 200ml vodka.

chrissnell2• 12 years ago

It would take quite a pump to match the speed of a skilled bartender with a soda gun in one hand and a vodka bottle in the other.

VLM3• 12 years ago

You might be surprised at what compressed air and a liquid siphon tube can do with a vodka bottle. 100 psi rated, extremely fast acting air valves are not that cheap and you need to filter and regulate the air and slow leaks make a mess and some dripping is inevitable, so "the scene" tends to now use tubing pumps as seen in the linked article.

Another tech thats been popular over the years is just tipping the bottle, which has the advantage of putting on quite a show and the disadvantage (or maybe not?) of splashing. You need a beefy servo because the center of gravity and torque are going to vary as the bottle empties.

Finally another tech often implemented in these robots is running the receptacle on an accurate-ish lab scale. Gram level accuracy is probably good enough although 0.1g accuracy would be better.

Its an old idea thats been around since at least the 80s home computer era, its been fun watching reimplementations and new ideas and new techs.

frobozz• 12 years ago

It always surprises me when I see peristaltic pumps used in these projects, rather than optics.

superrad• 12 years ago

Yeah the pumps always seem like overkill, why not let gravity do most of the work for you.

gamesbrainiac• 12 years ago

You still have to put in the ice youself. Perhaps version 2.0 will have this feature :P

hemancuso• 12 years ago

I've always thought something like this would be a fun idea to build a cocktail bar around. 80% of making a great cocktail is precisely measuring and combining high quality ingredients. .

If you spent some time making a very attractive machine that was fun for patrons to watch, mixed great drinks that were finished with a human touch, it could be a really interesting draw. I imagine a place with a beautiful/badass MIT-made drink-mixing machine would do quite well in Kendall square.

Create list of 8-10 interesting drinks that change weekly, that source from perhaps a dozen different liquors/fresh juices. The machines selects one of 4 glasses that was already clean, could precisely measure/mix/shake the drink leaving the bartender to garnish, present, squeeze fresh lemons into a container. I think you could have a quality experience.

ljf• 12 years ago

Totally this - I always day dream about buying an industrial robotic arm and setting it to work as a cocktail machine - some of the seriously high end ones move at insane speeds, so this could work out faster than human barstaff - especially if you can mutli-thread the tasks.

One for my lottery win daydreams.

conanbatt• 12 years ago

Even better, you can make a recipe API, and given a set of ingredients and some configuration, anyone can suggest a drink or pick one if available, so every robot mix drinker makes the exact same cocktail in any bar.

Use case: I like my Old Fashioned strong with a slice of lemon instead of orange. Make recipe, put online. Go to any bar with robot mixer: same Old Fashioned everywhere!.

ngoel36• 12 years ago

This is literally what one Valley founder has done with Smitten Ice Cream in SF. http://www.wired.com/2013/06/the-blue-bottle-of-ice-cream/

Zigurd• 12 years ago

I'll have a soylent and vodka.

leonhuu007• 12 years ago

You should monetize it soon. I would be one of your first customer. Great Job!

Gobiel• 12 years ago

You do not seem to put the emphasis on what's interesting: Is the drink actually any good?

Great job, obviously!

pa5tabear• 12 years ago

We really need this for Soylent, and I remember there was talk about this on the Soylent forums soon after they got going.

Does anyone know specifically what the issues are to creating a Soylent bot? Or is it in the works?

joezydeco• 12 years ago

SmartBar has been around a few years with a ready commercial product:

http://smartbarusa.com/

They've found some traction with places like cruise ships and hotel conference facilities. They can drop one of these at a cocktail hour with a preset spend limit and the machine will happily pour drinks until the tab is maxxed out.

Build your own drink mixing robot

Related Stories