Gallery: Robot Bartenders Sling Cocktails for Carbon-Based Drinkers

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The secret to a great cocktail, most connoisseurs would agree, has something to do with the ice, the liquor, the glass — and the bartender.

But what if the bartender is not a warm-blooded human with a sympathetic ear, but rather a cold, soulless machine made of pistons, valves and servos?

At a bar in San Francisco, a group of artists, engineers and tinkerers sought the answer with their creations: robots designed specifically to pour out a nice drink.

The booze-making bots included an all-mechanical, lever-operated robot; a Cosmobot with a rocket-shaped body; and Barnold, who is “strong and big, just like Arnold.”

“We really just like robots and cocktails, and both together seemed like the perfect thing,” said Simone Davalos, one of the organizers of the Barbot 2010 event. “There is no real aim for world-changing, paradigm-shifting technological achievement, at least not from our perspective, but who knows? Lots of amazing things have happened over cocktails.”

From cosmos to appletinis, these robots measured, mixed and poured out drinks that were precisely assembled. And those droids were mesmerizing to watch.

As for the drinks themselves, having sampled drinks from almost all the robots, my verdict is that the robots still have a long way to go. The cocktails taste just a little too clinical. There’s a missing ingredient in there. Could that be the human touch?

The Corpse Reviver

Even a humble cocktail robot can be an engineering marvel. The imaginatively named Corpse Reviver is a cleverly designed robot that’s completely mechanical.

“It’s all levers and linkages,” said Benjamin Cowden. who created the robot.

The Corpse Reviver has four levers that are attached to four bottles arranged in a circle. To make yourself a drink, place a glass at the center and pull the first lever. This pushes the attached bottle up, then tips a measured pour of a little more than an ounce into a bowl-shaped holding container. Do the same with the two other levers, and finally pull back on the fourth to release the stopper and push the liquid from the holding container into a second chamber that’s full of ice. A few seconds later, the drink is in the glass.

“This is my favorite robot in this room,” said Lillian Fritz-Laylin who had come to check out the event . “It’s interactive on multiple levels. It’s not just ‘push a button and walk away.’ And the drink was really good.”

Cowden designed the entire mechanism and sketched it out on a 2-D design program. All the parts for the robot have been custom laser-cut. And it’s the attention to details that really make this a winner. For instance, once a lever is pulled and the bottle tips out its pour, a hydraulic damper and spring mechanism make sure it slowly and steadily returns to its original position.