As the old saying goes, when the only tool you have is a 6 DOF industrial robotic arm, every problem looks like an opportunity to make it serve up adult beverages. [benkokes] found himself in this familiar predicament and did what any of us would do, but his process wasn’t without a few party fouls as well as a few head-scratchers.
One of the common problems that people who suddenly find themselves with an old industrial robot have is that there’s usually no documentation or instructions. This was true here with the added hiccup of the robot’s UI being set to Chinese. Luckily no one had changed the root password, and eventually he was able to get the robot up and working.
Getting it to make drinks was a different matter altogether. [benkokes] needed a custom tool to hold the cup as well as shake it, and 3D printed a claw-style end effector with a lid. Out of his multi-colored pack of party cups, however, the orange cups were different enough in dimension to cause problems for the shaking lid which was discovered when the robot spilled a drink all over the table.
Eventually, though, the robot was successfully serving drinks at a party. One of [benkokes]’s friends happened to be a puppet maker and was able to outfit it with a tailored tuxedo for the party as well, and he also programmed it to dance in between serving drinks, completing the AI revolution we have all been hoping for. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is a common project for people who suddenly come to posses a large general-purpose industrial robot, while others build robots specifically for this task alone.
Robots Have No Tails ;)
“…the added hiccup of the robot’s UI being set to Chinese…”
That’s my nightmare…that somhow I’ll manage to do that to my iPhone or tablet, and I’ll have to learn Chinese to undo it.
Remember the 3 laws of robotics. :-) Hopefully [benkokes] found creative ways to make the robot arm safe for party-goers. Many industrial robots are kinda unforgiving. There is a whole class of “collaborative robots” whose arm(s) are weak, slow, and can detect collisions before hurting anyone.
Its a 1 minute video.
Its pretty clear the robot is isolated behind a bar,
and its located so its reach does not extend into a range that it could interact with humans
When its done making the drink it puts it on a linear rail track that bridges the gap.
So unless a party goer intentionally jumps the bar, or enters through a back side door, Theres really no risk, assuming the bot doesnt start throwing drinks at people.
Automating already lowest-paid jobs, I see. McJobs are next in line, I am afraid, though, I don’t know how they’ll figure paying minimum wage to the maintenance crew. McFlurries Machines scandal, remember that one?
I suddenly recall how local self-checkout lines were such astonishing success, they are now scrambling to hire back some of the old faith minimum-wage grunts, and there aren’t many left around. Also, as predicted, theft grew to such proportions, they now have human-staffed barebones literal checkout lanes with zero additional merchandise, and cameras everywhere, even watching your shoes, and showing you your shoes on the same screen with the final balance.
But I digress, this is going the way it went earlier with the self-checkout lines, people will be ordering stuff and figuring out how to skip paying for it. Dedicated security guards would be needed to watch the workings, so at the end it would turn out cheaper just to hire actual bartenders, who often time double as part-time managers, part-time bouncers, part-time entertainers, part-time everything.
If this is meant to be sold to the filthy rich basement bars, then by all means, indulge them, though, I highly suspect they probably don’t want to see Fanuc the Robot Hand, they want to see Pamela Anderson or Britney Spears, charming smile and all that’s included.
You seem to be confused about the wage bracket involved in your assumptions. In 2023, about 1.1% of hourly paid workers in the U.S. earned at or below the federal minimum wage
The average hourly wage for McDonald’s maintenance staff can vary significantly, but current data from sources like Indeed and ZipRecruiter suggest an hourly range of roughly $14 to $21 per hour
The national average annual salary for a grocery store checkout clerk (cashier) is approximately $32,000 to $38,000, or roughly $16 to $18 per hour
As for your admiration of the multifunctional role of bartenders,
and your fear of people gaming the robotic system for free drinks,
Guess who makes the bulk of their income from tips? Bartenders. Overpouring accounts for approximately 30% of bar losses
Behavioral (Theft and mis-rings) account for approximately 50% of bar losses.
So fully 80% of bar losses are caused by bartenders.
Leaves quite a bit of room for your imagined scam related losses.
I do not work “in the industry” but sure have friends who do, true, their $14/hr wage can (and regularly) grow way pass gross $35 due to tips and whatnots. Whatnots do not include theft (as far as I know my friends), though, there are plenty other things where/how they make their salaries fatter. Deals on things :-] If your bartenders friends were stealing, I suggest you un-friend them. Because suddenly you may turn out to be their next umm, you guessed it.
Regardless, nationwide stats are good and all, but I prefer “real stories from the trenches”. I trust one story as told by my friend over ten stories from the US media (or national statistics). Not everything is captured in the statistics, in case you didn’t know – only what can be reliably indexed/numbered. How does one index, say, friendliness of the bartender? It does make a big difference, btw, whether he/she is friendly or not (and most bartenders that I know are actually reasonably good judges of characters – though, I can easily fool most of them, just not find it worthy my time or effort, say, I mention that I actually HATE beer :] ). (spoiler alert – not only I’ve studied statistics in university, I regularly run across its known mistakes, Correlation vs. Causation, Sampling Bias, etc etc – again, ANY statistics is only as good as its input data … which is almost always incomplete to start with).
“Imagined scam related losses” are quite real – it goes like this, when the self-checkout lines were added en-masse, and it suddenly was found relatively easy to sneak an item or two undetected (mind you, I am an honest customer; if I find extra item in my bag, I literally walk back to the store, and pay for it), the demographic that never even thought of stealing, joined those who regularly do so. If you don’t know this, you never took college sociology classes – it is called “crowd mentality” – individuals in a crowd suddenly find it easier to break the law and get away with it, seeing how others just did so in front of them. I’ll add to this that these risks were quite predictable, but were ignored; adding more security cameras only add more to the issue – because now there is another dilemma WHO is watching ALL of those additional cameras? AI? How does AI spot a thief? By reporting to a human for a review? Later or now?
Another predictable issue – $14 or $16 per hour is still at the bottom of the food chain; maybe in the early 2000 it was “living wage”, now it is more like “allowance” so that one doesn’t die of hunger. You literally CANNOT rent a half an apartment with that wage – because you’ll also need a car insurance, car maintenance, food, cloths, medical, etc etc. if one can scrounge living in a shack in a forest, hunting for food, avoiding hospitals (or things like family and kids), then maybe. Obviously, people WILL BE augmenting their meager allowances with something else. Again, crowd mentality.
Oh, managers steal even WORSE than workers, believe me. One example I personally know – McD job, the freezer jackets that regularly wear out from use, so new ones are regularly sent in. Right, old ones are washed, slightly mended, still used. New ones usually go straight to the manager’s kids. How do I know? :] There is a LOT of stuff you don’t know. McFlurries machines, emptied at night … to where? I’ll leave that part as a home exercise for the user :]
You trust anecdote over fact. Hard to argue with willful ignorance.
“You literally CANNOT rent a half an apartment with that wage – because you’ll also need a car insurance, car maintenance, food, cloths, medical, etc etc.”
My daughter shares a 2br apartment in our cities tourist district with a friend. They pay $1400mo all utilities and internet included. The standard 3X rent figure puts them at a needed $2100/mo income each. That works out to 32 hours a week at $15.15/hr.
Their neighbor lives alone in a 1br the floor below them. She pays $900mo all utils paid. My daughter was going to move into that apartment when her last roommate got married and moved out, but her friend (current roommate) went through a breakup with the guy she was living with the same month, so she cancelled the move downstairs.
Like many urbanites she does not drive. Everything is within walking distance, or accessible by bus/streetcar. The monthly pass is $45.
With the federal subsidy her health insurance with vision and dental only runs $35mo with ZERO deductible and $3200 max annual out of pocket. So no avoiding hospitals or doctors.
Her health insurance even pays for her gym membership.
She doesnt live off doordash and takeout. She spends around $200-300/mo on walmart grocery delivery.
Her life is a far cry from living in a shack in the woods hunting for food.
So Maybe not in LA, SF, NYC, but ANECDOTALLY $14-16/hr IS a livable wage in some places.
Almost got myself an industrial scara robot once. I was thinking on making a bar robot out of it. But it wasn’t meant to be.