I'm sorry, but pushing a button on a fully automatic espresso machine does not make the robot a barista. I'd like to see the robot make me an espresso using a semi-automatic espresso machine, making sure to sample the espresso throughout the day to check for over or under extraction, and adjusting the grind to compensate for changes in air pressure and temperature.
As someone who works remotely I'll go out to the coffee shop for some brief human interaction. Sometimes it's the only time in the day I interact with people outside my home.<p>Personally I don't see the draw to a goofy robotic arm that slings espresso. Vending machines are already a thing, coffee included. This just seems like an excessively expensive way to implement one.
That is a very ugly solution in my opinion. TFA they set out to make a bit of performance art out of it with “machines operating machines” but the result is dystopian not beautiful. Seeing a robotic arm with n degrees of freedom which looks like it could weld cars just to move a coffee cup around in space...<p>And it probably makes terrible coffee. Notice the lack of late art, and the poor quality of the foam.
I don't get it. There have been fully-automatic, vending machine style espresso machines around for a long time. This seems to use technology suited for a different purpose; it's certainly a big robot, but it doesn't exactly seem good at making coffee.
<i>Year and years</i> ago, there used to exist a profession where a man behind a bar mixed softdrinks together for customers on demand, often with custom embellishments like cherries, ice cream and the like. This was a very popular, very trendy job. And customers enjoyed the experience. You can still find elderly people today who lament the almost complete demise of the <i>soda jerk</i>.<p>I'm pretty sure barista will eventually go the way of the soda jerk. It's inconceivable to this generation; people can't imagine giving up the 'human touch' and personalization. But one day, maybe 20 years from now or two or three generations from now, convenience of automatic systems will win and the barista will be relegated to one or two retro novelty shops in large cities. And the people in this thread will be the new elderly curmudgeons, complaining about how young people live life too fast and fucked it all up.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_jerk" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_jerk</a>
These robots take the space of a human, but it isn't safe for a human to be in there at the same time as the robot. Plus, people can self-optimize. If you put another robot in there, it would barely increase throughput. Two humans would easily fit in that space, and they could roughly double throughput during peak hours.<p>Look to CafeX for a slightly different approach at the exact same concept. Except the whole coffee shop fits in a 2 meter cube.<p>Personally I think the most effective coffee machine won't even use these gigantic industrial robot arms. But they make for an entertaining gimmick.
This really drives me nuts. You get this long article about the "discerning coffee connoisseur", and yet you have a picture of the robot pouring coffee in a paper cup.<p>To me this is exactly like seeing an article about sommelier and a picture of a guy drinking wine from a paper cup. Well no it's actually much worse: wine is rather cold compared to coffee so it doesn't extract the taste of paper and plastic as much as coffee does.<p>I really really can't understand how anyone would spend over $2 (often significantly more) to drink anything out of a disposable container. One espresso costs them at most $0.20 in beans, electricity and water, you mark it up 10 times, you gotta give me the option of a ceramic or glass cup. Compare that with a glass of wine, which usually is marked up only 2-3 times in a restaurant...
CafeX in San Francisco is pretty nice, the major advantage is that it takes up very little space (which saves a lot of money due to the high rents in SF) and it's pretty fast, I generally get my coffee there much faster than from a local Starbucks or Blue Bottle.<p>I don't expect automated cafes to be as good in every way, but if they can get 80% of the way there with higher speed or lower costs they'll have my business.
Is a person that operates a fully automatic coffee machine a barista?<p>I love a good espresso but you can‘t even get that at most places. A lot of people seem to like Starbucks I don‘t think they serve a good espresso. It seems to me that they specialize in hot milkshakes and not coffee.
I'm a bit surprised to see this at liberal Berkeley. It seems to be poised to wipe out scores of low-skilled retail/labor jobs, at the benefit of the business owners and maybe a mechanical engineer.<p>Reminds me of John Henry from the great Johnny Cash:<p>"Now did the Lord say that machines ought to take place of livin'?<p>And what's a substitute for bread and beans? I ain't seen it!<p>Do engines get rewarded for their steam?"<p><a href="https://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/johnny+cash/the+legend+of+john+henrys+hammer_20235202.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/johnny+cash/the+legend+of+john...</a>
This is a really interesting idea. If they can replicate what a human barista can do, this has alot of potential. Customers make accounts to order coffee from their phones, so you can send a survey after the person gets their coffee and ask how they liked it. Depending on what they say, the robots can make the coffee a little different next time until they find what the customer likes. So you can have a consistent cup of coffee that is made just for you.
Just an opinion but this is fantastic tech, just lacks any humanoid resemblance, more like an industrial car factory assembly line. In the future of course, we will have humanoid robots that appeal to our emotions as well because why not?
I'm going to go all Australasian Coffee Snob here: They may well be correct for Berkeley, but they've got a large barrier to acceptance outside of the US.
Another, more human, take on this from Barista Hustle:<p><a href="https://baristahustle.com/blog/the-death-of-the-death-of-the-barista/" rel="nofollow">https://baristahustle.com/blog/the-death-of-the-death-of-the...</a><p>TL;DR (I watched this a couple of months ago, so this is an attempt a remembering the thesis. I also don't know if I agree or not that this is a good future, but it is the future presented in the video) -- the robots are coming, which is going to give us push-button coffee. There will still be people there to give you a human experience, and they'll get to focus on that experience instead of being split between making coffee and talking to you.