Robot Bartender Appears in Seoul Bar, and Plays Ice Hockey Very Well
Robots will do more and more, including navigation, serving food, and performing talk shows. This is not enough. Now, a bar in Seoul, South Korea has also invited robots to be bartenders. This is also a measure taken to ensure safety during the COVID-19 epidemic.
A robot expertly and calmly uses a knife and ice pick to carve a perfect ice ball, then places it into a glass and slowly pours in whiskey.
This is not a scene from a movie, but a bar scene in Coffee Bar K in Seoul, South Korea.
That’s right, the robot bartender is here! Sir, would you like a drink?
Robot bartender makes ice balls fast and round
Due to the rampant spread of the new coronavirus,In order to encourage customers to return to entertainment venues after quarantine and eliminate the worry of virus transmission, Coffee Bar K in Seoul, South Korea invited the robot Cabo to be a bartender.
The six-foot-tall Cabo robot wears a tailored vest and bow tie, and looks like a bartender.
Cabo is also very clear at work. With a piece of ice in its rapidly spinning "hand", it quickly makes a ball of ice and says in Korean: "See? A beautiful ice ball is ready. Enjoy a cold whiskey."
While all Cabo has to do up until now is make ice, reports say it's not just any ice cubes, but perfectly spherical whiskey spheres.
Therefore, this is a skill that requires a certain threshold!
After the bar cluster infection incident, we want to restart the business first to ensure safety
Coffee Bar K introduced the bartending robot because the management hoped thatDuring the epidemic, it can calm customers' emotions and remind people to maintain a safe social distance.
Choi Won-woo, a live bartender at Coffee Bar K with Cabo, said, “Because bars are usually full of people, customers tend to feel very anxious.So I think it would be safer if robots made and delivered the ice cubes, rather than us making them ourselves.”
This may be related to the previous mass infection incident in a nightclub in Seoul.
About a month ago, a 20-year-old man in South Korea was diagnosed with COVID-19. Later, according to Yonhap News Agency, he visited three nightclubs and two bars in Itaewon, Seoul on May 1 without wearing a mask.
As of the time this man was diagnosed, there were confirmed cases in five nightclubs in Itaewon.After that, according to the close contact tracing, the number of confirmed cases related to it increased to hundreds. This is the second large-scale collective infection incident in Seoul.
In this regard,The mayor of Seoul asked clubs, hotels, dance halls and other entertainment venues to stop operating.Crowds are prohibited from gathering and violators will be severely punished.
Therefore, if bars want to reopen, taking safety measures is undoubtedly the top priority.
However, in fact, Cabo is not a new robot, it has been around since 2017. Therefore, Coffee Bar K is not the only institution to introduce robot bartending.
Café Bot, also based in South Korea, has also already introduced a non-human "bartender" that can mix drinks, but it's actually just a robotic arm, not a full robot like Cabo.
In addition to ensuring safety, Café Bot manager Kim Tae-wan also pointed out that the "bartending robot" can provide consistent quality drinks, which is something that human bartenders cannot provide.Therefore, standardized production is also an advantage of bartending robots.
However, after experiencing this global COVID-19 pandemic, I wonder if people will still be wary of places like bars and nightclubs, even if robots are introduced.
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