Your Robocup, Sir

07:00 am, the bus leaves in 15 minutes and you’ve got a chance to run to the nearest coffee shop to get your morning dose of excellent caffeine. You come into a café, happily recognizing that there are only two competitors in the queue, and already start to feel the energy of a double Americano in your hand.

5 minutes pass, the queue is suspiciously motionless. With eyes half-opened, you see how an equally sleepy employee is trying to write the name Caterinah for the third time. After the fifth attempt, you decide that the name of your daughter or son will be Li.

10 minutes, you notice the small pin "trainee" on the barista, but still do not lose hope.

15 minutes, the man in front of you complains that he’s got a cappuccino, but he asked for cocoa. You are ready to buy this cup of him just to get closer to your desired coffee sooner than the bus gets to the stop. You make an order. Along with the signal of the coffee machine «your coffee is ready», you hear the driver’s farewell horn. Another day, another attempt to cope with coffee time-management failed.

Familiar situation? Coffee houses lose potential and even loyal customers every day because of time pressure. The world is changing, demands are growing. Having made an order, a client is waiting for it already yesterday. The HoReCa tries to adapt to these changes, but what are the perspectives for coffee houses? “Fast” machine coffee could claim for the "Golden Coffee Raspberry", but not for the love of visitors.

A possible solution that was recently developed: robotic arms. The company Rozum Robotics has proposed a working solution for the HoReCa coffee segment: Rozum Café - an automated cafe with a robot barista.

The movable robotic arm as a real human barista mills coffee beans, tampers it under verified pressure, whips ads perfect milk foam and reaches the cup to the client. Sounds futuristic? But such robo-cafes have already been launched in several countries like Ukraine, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.

Such robotic coffee points in the most crowded places of the city could be an ideal solution to the problem. One robot performs up to 100 orders per hour, four times more as one employee. No more queues at airports, shopping malls, and business centers. No more furious clients. The taste of robot-made coffee is, in the literal sense of the word, programmed to the last drop. There are 7 types of drinks in the electronic barista menu, and it will even serve you three types of baking.

Creators attracted an expert from the team of winners of the European Barista Championship as a consultant at the stage of setting up the manipulator. Therefore, this project could be anticipated as a collaboration of the best human experience and the consistent quality of electronics.

The developers offer a franchise system for coffee shops and everyone who wants to start their own business. In fact, you become the employer of the robot. And perhaps it will be the fastest interview in your life. The standard barista requirements are wired into the robot. It works 24/7, with equally high quality at 7 am or 2 pm, all processes fully meet sanitary standards, and any human factor is excluded. Your employee will be the greatest polyglot: the order can be made in any of the chosen languages. It takes up to 2 weeks to make such an automated complex, and developers want to reduce the production cycle to 3-4 days.

The idea of robotic personnel causes as always vague concerns absorbed with the films with young Schwarzenegger and books of H.Wells. This is it? Machine revolution is coming? Millions of people will lose their jobs? But let's look at the situation from the side of employers and visitors (they are human too, you know). In cafes mostly students are arranged for part-time work. Their training takes time and money, and most likely that the young barista will immediately leave on the search of a degree suitable place right after graduation. Actually, there are not so many highly professional baristas, and no robot can replace them. But they can teach a robot to make high-quality coffee free for all. So Rozum Café is a place where speed and quality meet.

We live in a time when more and more monotonous work rests on the non-fragile metal shoulders of robots. Humanity is getting more time and opportunities for what robots are not yet capable of: arts, creativity and generating new visions.

And to add a bit of soul and emotion to the robot coffee, perhaps the creators will add some emoticons to their barista interface? :)