South Korean cafe uses robot barista to ensure social distancing

A cafe in Daejeon, South Korea, is now using robots to prepare drinks and deliver them to customers.

The whole system involves a coffee-making robotic arm and a serving robot and can make 60 different types of coffee. The capsule-shaped robot has a tray installed in it to carry drinks. The system can communicate and transmit data to other device.

An order of six drinks, processed through a kiosk, took just seven minutes. The only human employee at the two-story cafe also has some cleaning duties and refills ingredients

Lee Dong-bae, director of research at Vision Semicon said, “Robots could help people observe social distancing in public. Our system needs no input from people from order to delivery, and tables are sparsely arranged to ensure smooth movements of the robots, which fits well with the current distancing campaign”

The manufacturer aims to supply at least 30 cafes with robots this year.