Hack a Day » vienna

Roboexotica 2008

Eliot — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 03:53:12 +0000

We couldn’t make Roboexotica in Vienna, Austria this year (check out last year’s coverage), so we asked [Bre Pettis] to act as our liaison.

Last night was the opening party of Roboexotica, the worldwide gathering of cocktail robots. It was a blast! Pictured above is Robovox, a 40 foot high robot that you can text message to and it will say what you text to it!

I was running my robot arms as a competition, armatron style, to get cherries into a shot glass.

The Reprap that Marius, Philipp, and the gang over at Metalab made last year that failed was revived and cranked out shot glasses all night!

Here are my photos. More photos tagged Roboexotica are coming in all the time, stay tuned!

Posted in cons, home entertainment hacks, robots hacks

Roboexotica highlights

Eliot — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 22:30:00 +0000

After the break are some of our favorite bits of machinery from Roboexotica so far.

To us the BF Ice Cube Gun, you first place your glass below the the target.

Then you load your ice chunk into the CO2 powered cannon and fire. When it strikes the target the ice shatters and falls into the glass. If you hit the target accurately, it will also pour alcohol into the glass as well.

Robomoji is a perennial favorite. The bot is incredibly ponderous but fun to watch as it makes mojitos. It squeezes limes, measures brown sugar, muddles everything, and even has a combination ice maker/crusher.

The conference even embraces bar food bots as evidenced by the Perpetual Popper. The machine pops popcorn on single kernel at a time by placing it a the focusing point of a concave mirror. The whole unit acts as a heliostat orientation itself to the sun.

Although not a robot, the most impressive shenanigans came from The Provider. monochrom decided to use a cement mixer to mix and serve screwdrivers. Sean Bonner provides us with videos of its first and last runs (you’ll see why).

More photos are being added all the time to Flickr.

Roboexotica 2007

Eliot — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 18:30:00 +0000

Tonight marks the kickoff of Roboexotica in Vienna. It’s the world’s leading festival for cocktail robotics. The event aims to explore the role of cocktail robotics as an index for the increasing integration of technological innovations into human lives. It also explores the explosion of radical hedonism in man-machine interaction.

…or it’s just an excuse for a bunch of smart people to get together, build robots, and drink.

The word ‘robotics’ seems to always imply ‘efficiency’, but that’s definitely a no-no at Roboexotica. Fine tuned manufacturer grade cocktail production is not the goal; personality, charm, character, all of these qualities are important in machinery destined for Roboexotica. You can already see some photos from the event setup on Flickr and we’ll be bringing you more posts on the individual machines as we get more information/drinks.