The crew over at [Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories] has been hard at work preparing for the Barbot 2011 cocktail robotic exhibition. This year, they are packing some serious drinking fun with the Drink Making Unit 2.0. The predictably named follow-up to last year’s wildly popular Drink Making Unit doubles the mixing capability with six, rather than three fluids, and provides a visually stimulating drink mixing experience.

While they are similarly named, the new unit has been completely redesigned since last year. No longer are they relying on breast pumps to move the alcohol along. Instead, they are using compressed air to dispense fluids from wash bottles which were constructed from laboratory beakers. The fluids are measured in specially altered graduated cylinders that are designed to tip over and release their contents when the appropriate amount of alcohol has been poured. These cylinders are designed to mimic the movement of Japanese garden fixtures called “deer chasers”, tipping back and forth solely powered by the ingress and egress of liquid.

The dispenser’s control panel houses an ATmega164, which orchestrates the entire operation. It interfaces with the LED driver boards that make up the display via SPI. The micro controller is also tasked with monitoring when the graduated cylinders tip their libations into the dispensing funnel, which is done using IR LEDs and photogates.

It’s a great looking machine, and while there isn’t any drink mixing video as of yet, we can’t wait to see it in action.

Here is something we didn’t expect (NSFW). The machinima crew behind RedVsBlue, Rooster Teeth, actually did a hack!

The idea is simple enough, how could you experience driving a vehicle like in a video game – aka, third-person. With some steel bar, Canon 5D camera, and a 15inch monitor inside of a blacked out cab, they accomplished just that.

What surprised us the most, is the great difficulty and difference there is between the video game vehicle and the real life one. But all of us here at HAD know why; they need to replace the steering wheel with a joystick. While they’re at it they can make it wireless and remote-controlled. Finally a HUD would be easy enough to program (might we suggest processing). Oh dear lord, is the world ready for this!?

3 breast pumps, a Meggy jr RGB (slightly modified) and copious amounts of alcohol. This sounds like a typical weekend at HAD headquarters, but it is in fact the parts list for the Drink Making Unit by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. Created for the upcoming Barbot 2010 event, this unit is a cocktail mixer. Load 3 liquids in, program the Meggy and you can push a button to dispense. We are pleased to see how much they modified off the shelf components to make this happen. Yes, there could be major improvements like mixing, more liquid reservoirs, and a better cooling system, but we think this thing is pretty slick.

When we showed you Bar2d2, the bar tending party bot, there was one huge hurdle left to solve. It was only a drink dispenser at that, while awesome, couldn’t actually mix drinks. That has been remedied in this update. Now, a computer handles all of the drink orders, then sends them via bluetooth to bar2d2. The drinks are mixed right there in front of you in the comforting blue glow of bar2d2′s neon. You can check out more build pictures here.

[Jamie Price] directed us to this photostream of the build for Bar2D2. Though it isn’t the first bartender bot we’ve covered. It very well could be the best executed.  Bar2D2 can travel around the party dispensing bottles of beer, shots, and even cans. The construction looks fantastic. You can follow along in the photostream from the very beginning.  It is currently radio controlled and can party for about 8 hours per charge.  The next planned upgrade is a system that allows you to choose a mixed drink from a database and Bar2D2 will mix it up.

As you can see from the pictures, Bar2D2 is the life of the party, attracting pretty girls and cheesy sci-fi tv pirate astronauts too.

We’ve seen our fair share of home made arcade machines, some complex and some simple. This one stands head and shoulders above the rest with its ability to combine two of our deepest loves: beer and video games. There’s not a lot of information, just a few pictures. We’d love to see some build shots or action shots.  We’d love to test it out actually.

Here’s an update: [Burke LaShell] is the maker of this fine project. You can see more pictures of it in this thread. Thanks, [Shawn].

[via Gizmodo]

David Worden let us know that he has completed work on his Disco Bar which we covered earlier. To save his bandwidth, I suggest you watch the video on YouTube.