Build your own drink mixing robot(yujiangtham.com)
yujiangtham.com
Build your own drink mixing robot
http://yujiangtham.com/2014/05/25/build-your-very-own-drink-mixing-robot-part-1/
55 comments
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!.
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!.
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.
One for my lottery win daydreams.
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/
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.
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.
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?
Does anyone know specifically what the issues are to creating a Soylent bot? Or is it in the works?
You do not seem to put the emphasis on what's interesting: Is the drink actually any good?
Great job, obviously!
Great job, obviously!
You should monetize it soon. I would be one of your first customer. Great Job!
I'll have a soylent and vodka.
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.
Nice! Still got a ways to catch up with these guys though:
http://www.roboexotica.org/
Includes regularly-scheduled party!
http://www.roboexotica.org/
Includes regularly-scheduled party!
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?
One of the large benefits of peristaltic pumps is that the only thing that the liquid touches is the tube.
Ah, that's great. For those wondering how: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Peristaltic_pump.gif
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.
It needs some kind of cleaning cycle (unless all your ingredients are hard liquor...)
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)!
[deleted]
This is now my summer project. Thank you!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They'll probably always need some human around for liability reasons. That is unless the robot bartender is going to add some sort of breathalyzer component to see if people have had too much.
Also unless it's a club it likely would need to scan the person's ID and confirm whether or not the person was who the ID mentioned adding some complexity to the robot that otherwise wouldn't be required for just serving drinks.
The sysadmin person you mentioned could definitely take on that liability role in addition to anything else he needs to do to support the robot.
Also unless it's a club it likely would need to scan the person's ID and confirm whether or not the person was who the ID mentioned adding some complexity to the robot that otherwise wouldn't be required for just serving drinks.
The sysadmin person you mentioned could definitely take on that liability role in addition to anything else he needs to do to support the robot.
> I'm not buying the "robots can't make drinks" argument.
I agree. It's the 21st century and robots should eSily cope with making a range of drinks.
And yet, the coffee from my local supermarket machine is undrinkably awful. (And this is my unrefined UK taste buds. I am nowhere near a coffee snob but I can tell cooked old milk). There's a Costa coffee machine in a supermarket. Costa are a big UK brand. The machine is big, about the size of a cola vending machine. That coffee is similarly awful.
So, yes, good robots would be brilliant. I just hope we avoid the lousy robots.
I agree. It's the 21st century and robots should eSily cope with making a range of drinks.
And yet, the coffee from my local supermarket machine is undrinkably awful. (And this is my unrefined UK taste buds. I am nowhere near a coffee snob but I can tell cooked old milk). There's a Costa coffee machine in a supermarket. Costa are a big UK brand. The machine is big, about the size of a cola vending machine. That coffee is similarly awful.
So, yes, good robots would be brilliant. I just hope we avoid the lousy robots.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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...
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.
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.
assembling a big mac is certainly easier than many existing processes in factory lines, too. Why doesn't a robot do it? (Which could multitask and easily keep track of a dozen items on the grill, moving between them in tenths of seconds.)
I've wondered that myself. Where are the robot fast food chains?
Burger king has had fully automated burger cookers for about as long as I've been alive. They're mechanically interesting and I got to study one on a school tour. It turns out the needs for sanitation and cleanliness are the driving design factor and even a "simple" flame-throwin' grill is bumping up against the economic limits at this time. Dealing with bread and refrigerated vegetables would result in the cleaning, sanitization, and QA costs exceeding the cost of simply doing it by hand.
Also simplicity of troubleshooting is critical, in an industry where all non-customer facing labor has converted completely over to illegal aliens. A "paper jam" in the sandwich wrapper, or similar, cannot be allowed to completely shut down the facility. Also employee turnover is an issue, monkey-see monkey-do works pretty well for repetitive manual labor, not so well for obscure robotic troubleshooting procedures.
In summary we have numerous robotic / automated appliances but the majority of labor in a kitchen is best done by hand for numerous design and financial constraints.
Also simplicity of troubleshooting is critical, in an industry where all non-customer facing labor has converted completely over to illegal aliens. A "paper jam" in the sandwich wrapper, or similar, cannot be allowed to completely shut down the facility. Also employee turnover is an issue, monkey-see monkey-do works pretty well for repetitive manual labor, not so well for obscure robotic troubleshooting procedures.
In summary we have numerous robotic / automated appliances but the majority of labor in a kitchen is best done by hand for numerous design and financial constraints.
Wow, very interesting information. Thanks for sharing your knowledge on the subject. I've always wondered about automation in fast food restaurants, but what you say does make a lot of sense.
The least human interaction I've seen in fast food is Febo in Amsterdam, where you just pick up a pre-made burger from a little "pod" of sorts and pay for it (by handing money to a person) at the back of the store.
The least human interaction I've seen in fast food is Febo in Amsterdam, where you just pick up a pre-made burger from a little "pod" of sorts and pay for it (by handing money to a person) at the back of the store.
Regarding jams and malfunctions: I envision a robot restaurant to not be completely staff free, but still have a trained mechanic on site to deal with any issues like these.
I guess it all comes down to cost, which is unfortunate because it should be cheaper in the long run to cut your staff by 99%. Plus being the first robot restaurant kind of markets itself.
I guess it all comes down to cost, which is unfortunate because it should be cheaper in the long run to cut your staff by 99%. Plus being the first robot restaurant kind of markets itself.
"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...
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...
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...
Have you ever been to an open bar event? So much faster - it's the payment that slows a regular bar down.
Consider a kickstarter, I'd love to buy one.
Actually, there's one similar, happening now: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/barobot/barobot-a-cockt...
And another that ended not long ago: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/partyrobotics/bartendro...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I've always preferred the compressed air approach, but mostly because of cost - those peristaltic pumps are pretty pricy if you want to get 12ish bottles in there. I was under the impression that you could use relatively cheap pneumatic solenoids like this http://www.amazon.com/Vdc-Normally-Closed-Solenoid-Valve/dp/... at ~$5 rather than ~$14. Do you think that it's important to get high quality valves? My plan was to use a scale and do some feedback control to compensate.
Hmm those are cheap, at $5 the old aerospace approach of a parallel/series high reliability network sounds like the cheapest way to prevent slow leaks. Draw 4 valves with two in series and two strings in parallel and no failure mode of any individual valve either stuck open or stuck closed can cause an overall mission fail. Another way to deal with slow leaks is a small intentional air leak on the top of the liquor bottle and trust your weight scale feedback because the output flow rate will be lower but how much lower will depend on the intentional air leak. So 10% of incoming air leaks out, well, thats OK if it prevents slow dribble.
WRT to quality valves if you have a slow leak in the air input valve, even just a drip per minute, you'll slowly drain the bottle while it sits there. A more complicated arrangement with more valves can vent the bottle when its not supposed to be pumping which helps.
Your scale idea is excellent and I've seen it done. If you're sufficiently motivated its a great platform to play with PID controllers or at least PD (not I) control theory.
For a literature search I've seen this kind of machine in make magazine maybe in the 00s or at least a couple years ago and in some 80s era home computer magazines. It fell out of favor in the 90s or maybe I wasn't paying attention.
Advanced systems put a slight vacuum on the delivery hose to prevent dribbling although there's obvious cross contamination fears. From memory this was part of the reason the "tip the whole bottle with a R/C servo" guy took that approach, side from being visually more stunning. I remember that guy writing about an air traffic control issue where you can't have the neck of two bottles in the same airspace simultaneously, so extra delay timing is critical, can't immediately drop one bottle at the same instant one is lifting up.
I also recall reading about a design involving "hit the wine-in-a-box button with a servo horn" although that had variable flow rate problems and splashing issues, which might be worked around.
WRT to quality valves if you have a slow leak in the air input valve, even just a drip per minute, you'll slowly drain the bottle while it sits there. A more complicated arrangement with more valves can vent the bottle when its not supposed to be pumping which helps.
Your scale idea is excellent and I've seen it done. If you're sufficiently motivated its a great platform to play with PID controllers or at least PD (not I) control theory.
For a literature search I've seen this kind of machine in make magazine maybe in the 00s or at least a couple years ago and in some 80s era home computer magazines. It fell out of favor in the 90s or maybe I wasn't paying attention.
Advanced systems put a slight vacuum on the delivery hose to prevent dribbling although there's obvious cross contamination fears. From memory this was part of the reason the "tip the whole bottle with a R/C servo" guy took that approach, side from being visually more stunning. I remember that guy writing about an air traffic control issue where you can't have the neck of two bottles in the same airspace simultaneously, so extra delay timing is critical, can't immediately drop one bottle at the same instant one is lifting up.
I also recall reading about a design involving "hit the wine-in-a-box button with a servo horn" although that had variable flow rate problems and splashing issues, which might be worked around.
The parallel/series approach sounds really interesting - I'll have to look at that. On the other hand, if you wanted to reduce valve count, you could even do charlie-plexing! Then you can get 2*sqrt(N) nice valves to control N bottles. That would be really cool. Now somebody's just got to build the 100 bottle bartending robot.
You still have to put in the ice youself. Perhaps version 2.0 will have this feature :P
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.