Drink Making Unit 2.1

While we are better known for other types of art robots (like the Eggbot and now the WaterColorBot), we have also been involved with cocktail robotics for the past few years.After a half-dozen cocktail robotics event over the past couple of years, we’ve had a chance to refit our famous bar-bot, Drink Making Unit 2.0, with a few well-earned upgrades.  Read on for the gory details!A little background: cocktail robotics is a peculiar sub-field of robotics, where the goal is generally to prepare beverages (alcoholic or otherwise) by automated processes, where bartender-grade showmanship and presentation count far more than efficiency. (You can read more about cocktail robots here and here.)In 2011, we introduced a cocktail robot named Drink Making Unit 2.0, which we brought to that year’s BarBot exhibition. DMU 2.0, as it is affectionately known, was built out of laser-cut acrylic, fitted with chemistry labware (including six each erlenmeyer flasks and graduated cylinders), and driven by a user-operated control panel that lets each person decide how they would like their drink mixed, from a set of six ingredients.Typically, the set of six ingredients consists of vodka and mixers, but the nameplates on DMU 2.0 are interchangeable, so it can be used just as easily with nonalcoholic ingredient sets such as an array of different juices, lemonade and flavorings (such as raspberry, strawberry, cherry, and mint), or italian syrups for topping snow cones or making italian sodas.