It may not happen Be the fastest barista in the world, but impressive – with a robot.
I recently watched as Memo, a new home robot from a company called Sunday Robotics, made coffee in an open kitchen in an open pool with mountain views, California.
Memo looks like something off the wall, with a glowing white body, two arms, a friendly cartoon face, and a red baseball cap. Instead of using legs like a full humanoid robot, memo moves around on a wheeled platform and changes its height by sliding up and down a central column.
The robot responded to the request for espresso by climbing on the countertop, then two pincerlike hands are used to go through each step required to use the espresso machine. It filled the porta filter with coffee grounds, put them down, put the porta filter in place and put the coffee cup below, press the necessary buttons to start the machine, and finally get a hot drink.
“We want to build robots that free people from cleaning, to dishes, from all household chores,” Tony Zhao, Cofounder and CEO of Sunday Robotics, told me as the robot delivered coffee to the person who asked for it.
Making a cup of espresso may not seem like much, but the feat is ridiculously difficult for a robot to do in a real, messy kitchen. It requires the ability to find different things, figure out how to hold them reliably, and use those things well. Church not only builds its own hardware but also trains the models that allow its system to learn. “We think the way to make a home robot is a full stack, and integrate directly,” Zhao said. “And that’s a very ambitious thing to do.”
Courtesy of Sunday Robotics
