The Robot Barista

The Robot Barista project aims to develop a social service robot capable of operating and serving beverages to people in a long-term human-robot coexistence settings. The Monash Robotics Lab is designed with the concept of human-robot coexistence. With an open lab design, it aims to allow researchers, students, and robots to work together in the shared space. Using the Monash Robotics Lab as our initial testbed, we have programmed our Fetch robot to take your coffee order, make the coffee for you, and deliver it to your desk. Our robot barista can autonomously and intelligently navigate the office-style environment, approach potential users and take their order through sociable conversations, and safely operate a pod-style coffee machine with its robotic arm to prepare the drink. We plan on using this robot barista platform to investigate how we can build more socialable service robots, increase user acceptance of service robots, and study long-term human-robot engagement.