The new robot barista at the cafe in South Korea’s Daejeon, is polite and swift because it smoothly makes its way towards consumers.
“Here is your Rooibos almonds tea latte, please enjoy. It’s even better if you stir it,” it says, as a customer reaches for her drink on a tray fixed in the large, gleaming white capsule-shaped computer.
After managing to contain an outbreak of the new coronavirus which infected over 11,000 individuals and 267 died, South Korea is steadily transitioning from intensive social distancing rules towards what the government calls “distancing in daily life”.
Robots could help people observe social distancing publically, said Lee Dong-bae, director of research at Vision Semicon, a smart factory solution provider which developed the barista robot along with a state-run science institute.
“Our system needs no input from people from order to delivery, and tables were sparsely arranged to ensure smooth movements of the robots, which fits will with the current ‘untact’ and distancing campaign,” he said.
The system, which uses a coffee-making robotic arm and a serving robot, can make 60 various types of coffee and serves the drinks to consumers at their seats. The robot can also communicate and transfer data to other devices and contains self-driving technology to calculate the best routes round the cafe.
An order of six drinks which is processed through a kiosk, took seven minutes only. The only human employee at the two-storey cafe was a patissier who also has some cleaning jobs and refills ingredients.
The manufacturer of the robot and also the scientific institute aim to provide a minimum of 30 cafes with robots in 2020.
