Memo will not be the world’s quickest barista, however it’s spectacular—for a robotic.
I not too long ago watched as Memo, a brand new residence robotic from an organization known as Sunday Robotics, made espresso in an open-plan kitchen in Mountain View, California.
Memo appears to be like like one thing out of Wall-E, with a gleaming white physique, two arms, a pleasant cartoonish face, and a pink baseball cap. Quite than utilizing legs as a completely humanoid robotic would, Memo strikes round utilizing a wheeled platform and adjustments its peak by sliding up and down a central column atop that platform.
The robotic responded to a request for an espresso by rolling over to a countertop, after which utilizing two pincerlike fingers to slowly undergo every step required to function an espresso machine. It stuffed the porta filter with espresso grounds, tamped them down, slotted the porta filter into place and put a espresso cup beneath, pressed the buttons wanted to begin the machine, and eventually retrieved the new drink.
“We want to build robots that free people from laundry, from the dishes, from all chores,” Tony Zhao, cofounder and CEO of Sunday Robotics, advised me because the robotic introduced the espresso over to the one that requested it.
Making a cup of espresso won’t appear spectacular, however the feat is ridiculously laborious for a robotic to do in an actual, messy kitchen. It requires the flexibility to determine completely different objects, work out the right way to grasp them reliably, and use these objects correctly. Sunday shouldn’t be solely constructing its personal {hardware} but in addition coaching the fashions that enable its system to study. “We think the way to make a home robot is to be full-stack, and to vertically integrate,” Zhao says. “And that’s a very ambitious thing to do.”
Courtesy of Sunday Robotics
