Humanoid robot becomes a bartender

When Vitor started building his humanoid robot a year ago, he didn’t have any specific application in mind. He just knew he wanted a robot and figured he’d find a use for it later. Well, he finally gave that robot a purpose by converting it into a bartender.

The original robot looked like the sort of thing you’d see in a gritty sci-fi movie, cobbled together by some kind of mad scientist using parts scavenged from a tech junkyard. That pretty accurately reflects how Vitor actually built the thing, as most of its mechanical parts were repurposed bits from other machines and even food containers. 

For it to perform its new bartending job, Vitor rebuilt the robot. It now has a Raspberry Pi 4 single-board computer controlling the motors through an Arduino Mega 2560 and drivers. The SBC listens through a microphone and Vosk speech recognition software, then replies to commands using eSpeak speech synthesis software and a speaker.

The robot also needed some hardware upgrades to make drinks. The most important of those upgrades was a motorized pump system, which can draw liquid from two vessels and push that out through nozzles mounted on the hand.

As long as the desired drink only requires two liquid ingredients, Vitrol can now request and receive delicious beverages from his slightly terrifying robot whenever he likes.

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