Just when things were getting really good for the world’s bartenders, here’s a reminder that there’s always a geek ready to make trouble. While the clever minds at the University of Washington did not program their creation to manage rambunctious customers, they have taken one more step toward the automated bartender.
The student inventors came up with this "bar-bot" as part of an electrical engineering course last year. With the capacity to hold up to four different bottles, infrared sensors and memory capacity to store not just recipes but individual drink preferences, Frankentender was put together with widely available components costing a few hundred dollars. The bar-bot can take a drink order remotely by way of a handheld touch pad.