Robot Baristas help coffee shops limit the spread of Covid-19 as lockdowns ease

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By Matthew Griffin Robo Revolution 2nd June 2020

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

Covid-19 has been a big boost for robots, and now they’re taking over coffee shops.

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The current Coronavirus pandemic, Covid-19, has been a boon for the rapid testing and development of a whole new raft of exponential technologies, from AI’s that are helping find vaccines and drones being used to identify infected people, through to robots being used to look after patients in hospitals and self-driving cars being used to make vital food deliveries. Now though, as the world dares to think about coming out of lock down businesses are having to think about how they can open their doors, comply with social distancing rules, and help prevent the spread of the virus.

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Businesses in South Korea are a case in point, and as the country opens back up again they’ve been getting creative to ensure their customers are safe, and as a case in point a café in Daejon has just hired a robot barista to take care of making and busing drinks around, Reuters reports.

See the Robo-Barista in action

Thanks to the robot, the café only has to employ a single human, who takes care of making pastries, as well as servicing and refilling their robot co-worker. The robot can make 60 different types of coffee and deliver them to customers around the café.

The company behind the robot, Vision Semicon, is hoping its fleet of mechanical workers could help while South Korean society adjusts to what officials are calling “distancing in daily life” — the next phase of the government’s efforts to relax social distancing rules.

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“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 in well with the current ‘distancing campaign,” Lee Dong-bae, director of research at Vision Semicon, told Reuters.

The downside of all these trials and tests though means that automation systems like these, after the pandemic has subsided, could become the norm, and in South Korea’s case push their unemployment rates, which in April saw its largest increase since 1999, even higher.

Source: Reuters

Matthew Griffin / About Author

Described by NASA as a "Walking Encyclopaedia of the Future" and one of the world’s most in demand keynote speakers Matthew Griffin, Founder and Futurist in Chief of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm, is a multi-award winning Futurist and strategic foresight expert, author, lecturer, mentor, podcast and YouTube host.

With a distinguished career running global business units at Atos, EMC, and IBM today Matthew helps leaders and titans of industry from all over the world explore the impact of the inter sections of technology, culture, and leadership, then helps them create high performance organisations that can continuously disrupt, outpace, and outthink their competition.

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