roboexotica

6 Articles

Roboxotica (Barbot Festival In Vienna)

December 13, 2013 by 9 Comments

minecraft-cocktailbot--verse-publications

Just this past week was this year’s Roboexotica 2013! The annual event was the world’s first and is perhaps the finest festival of cocktail serving robotics out there!

Founded 15 years ago in San Francisco, Roboexotica brings together scientists, hackers, and artists from all around the world to build the most awesome drink dispensing technologies. It’s also an opportunity to discuss innovation, science fiction, and the world of robotics to come — after utilizing some of the robots of course!

The photo above is of one of the popular bots from this year — it’s called the Minecraft Cocktailbot. It dispenses the liquor out of its floppy drive, but only when you control it from inside a game of Minecraft!

More of the barbots present at Roboxotica can be found on the main site. We think our second favorite is the Bunnybot. It defecates peanuts — the mightiest of all  in pellet-form bar food.

Stick around after the break to see the Minecraft Cocktailbot in action!

Continue reading “Roboxotica (Barbot Festival In Vienna)” →

Roboexotica 2008

December 5, 2008 by 2 Comments

robo11

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! Continue reading “Roboexotica 2008” →

Upcoming Events

August 17, 2008 by 9 Comments


It looks like it’s time to update our event list. Here are some hacking related events happening through the rest of the year.

  • ToorCon September 26-28 San Diego, CA – In its tenth year, ToorCon has always been one of our favorites. The conference is fairly small, but features great content like last year’s fuzzing talk.
  • Arse Elektronika (NSFW) September 25-28 San Francisco, CA – Happening the same time as ToorCon, this conference covers the sexual side of human and machine interaction. The device list has gems like The Seismic Dildo, which only turns on if there is seismic activity in the world.
  • Maker Faire October 18-19 Austin, TX – It’s Maker Faire! In Texas!
  • Roboexotica December 4-7 Vienna, Austria – The premier festival for cocktail robotics is also back for the tenth time. They’re always looking for more exhibitors. Check out our Hackit for ideas.
  • 25C3 December 27-30 Berlin, Germany I think we pretty much covered all the bases on this incredible conference yesterday.

Did we miss anything?

Hackit: Cocktail Robotics

November 22, 2007 by 19 Comments


Here is a special edition Hackit in honor of Roboexotica. Ever since making the decision to attend Roboexotica we’ve been speculating on the type of machines we’d like to see at such an event. Here are a handful of ideas:

Iceware via rapid prototyping: As we type this post, [Bre] is in the background attempting to build a RepRap style rapid prototyping machine that will construct shot glasses on demand. We were thinking it would be neat to cut beverage glasses out of blocks of ice using a milling machine, but why stick with normal milling equipment? It’s ice right; you could be doing something stupid like using a butane torch for your working tool. We then began to wonder “Has anyone built an ice based rapid prototyping machine?” You could just deposit water on a frozen surface to create your glassware. A group at the University of Missouri has been investigating “rapid freeze prototyping“. Since they’re using water, they only have to create the frozen shell of the part and then fill in the empty cavity with water to create a solid.

Continue reading “Hackit: Cocktail Robotics” →

Roboexotica 2007

November 22, 2007 by 5 Comments


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.