Robots Are Ready to Shake (and Stir) Up Bars

The silver-and-turquoise lounge, in the Miracle Mile Shops mall on the Strip, has 28 counter-style seats, each equipped with a tablet, facing a bar counter topped with two industrial-grade robotic arms. Patrons can order signature and classic cocktails, or fill a virtual cup with up to 14 ingredients of their choosing. Then the robotic arms go to work, gathering ingredients from a kind of futuristic back-bar automat; reaching up to a lattice of 120 liquor bottles; and tipping the resulting cocktail into a plastic cup proffered by a mechanical dispenser in the counter. Drinks take 60 to 90 seconds to make, and cost $12 to $16, said Stephan Mornet, president of Robotic Innovations, Tipsy Robot's parent company. For its automated bar, Tipsy Robot turned to Makr Shakr, an Italian startup that built its first robot bartender for Google I/O, the annual developer conference, in 2013. The company is one of several trying to automate bartending.