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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

robot barista

Blue Hill Brings Computer Vision to Its Coffee Robot to Recreate the Barista Experience

There is no shortage of robot baristas coming to market. Cafe X, Costa Coffee (née Briggo), Truebird, Crown Coffee, OrionStar, Cafe Rozum, FIBBEE and MontyCafe to name just some of the ones we’ve covered. But Seattle-based Blue Hill aims to differentiate itself from other players in the space by using computer vision to make a smarter machine that recreates the human barista experience.

We should start of by saying that when it comes to computer vision, Blue Hill has the bona fides. Blue Hill Founder is Meng Wang, who was previously CTO and Co-Founder of Orbeus, which developed the Rekognition computer vision/image analysis system. (Orbeus was acquired by Amazon in 2016 and became AWS Rekognition, which has become controversial in its own right.)

Wang is applying his computer vision pedigree to coffee. Like other robo-baristas, Blue Hill’s system (dubbed “Jarvis”) features an articulating arm that grabs cups and operates a La Marzocco espresso machine. But unlike other robots, Blue Hill’s arm is aided by robust computer vision which not only assists with item recognition, but also helps the articulating arm act more like a human barista.

As Wang explained it to me over video chat this week, Blue Hill’s computer vision means that things like milk or cups or spoons don’t need to placed in a specific area in order to be found by the robotic arm. The arm can open a fridge and identify “soy milk” wherever it is placed inside just by looking. Or if the grinder is moved, the arm doesn’t need to be re-programmed because it recognizes the grinder and can still operate it, no matter where it is. As long as the robot knows what to “look” for, the system can be set up to accommodate different shapes and spaces.

But Wang says the other advantage with its computer vision is its ability to train the articulating arm. By examining video of human baristas making coffee, Blue Hill’s robotic arm can replicate those same movements. The high pull, the frothing, the milk blending, even the latte art can be recreated by the robot by watching humans do the same thing. It uses the same coffee equipment used by specialty cafes, it just has a robot handling them.

The reason for all this high-tech robotic re-creation is that at the end of the day, Blue Hill wants to be in the high-end coffee business. It’s not just about the robot, it’s about creating a perfect cup of coffee. Blue Hill even sources and roasts its own beans. To be fair, Blue Hill isn’t the first company to tell me that they want to create a premium coffee experience delivered by robot. Briggo had its own line of coffee beans too, and Cafe X had a human on hand at each kiosk to curate a customer’s coffee choice.

But Blue Hill is more interested in building up its own brand of automated coffee experiences, rather than licensing out the technology to another coffee company. That choice could be a tough hill to climb for the company as people don’t know what a Blue Hill is and robots are still very new. As a result, lots of people will need to learn that a) robots can make coffee, and b) getting Blue Hill’s brand of robotic coffee is a better choice than finding a nearby Starbucks (a drink they’re already familiar with).

Blue Hill sticking with a premium, human-like experience also means that they are sacrificing a certain amount of speed. Right now, Blue Hill is focused on opening its kiosks inside other retailers like the Super Joy Coffee Lab or Swee20 desert shop, both in Portland, OR. But if Blue Hill wants to move into more high-traffic (and more revenue generating) locations like airports and office buildings, having a robot that behaves like a human sacrifices the speed you get with automation. Will people want to wait for a robot to make their latte like a human would? Perhaps, if the coffee is good enough. But people in those situations are typically more about speed than precision drink crafting.

Adding to the pressure, the robot coffee space hasn’t exactly worked out so far for some of the early startups. Briggo was quietly sold off to Costa Coffee with nary a whisper, and Cafe X shut down all of its locations last year (though it re-opening some and shipping machines off to Asia).

Will Blue Hill’s computer vision and premium cup of coffee be enough to bring in repeat customers? We’ll have to wait and see for ourselves.

Henn Na Cafe is Tokyo’s Robot Barista. Here’s What It Looks Like

Growing up, UHF TV stations would run Japanese anime cartoons that featured giant robots. Fast forward a few decades to when I finally got the chance to visit Tokyo, and I thought the city would be lousy with robots. But sadly, that turned out not to be the case. In fact, I could only find one coffee robot in Tokyo — which is a bit surprising, given that San Francisco has three, plus another one at its airport.

Nestled in the heart of the H.I.S. travel agency in the Shibuya part of Tokyo sits the Henn Na Cafe (fun fact, Henn Na means weird in Japanese). “Tom,” the autonomous articulating arm that serves up hot and iced coffee, matcha tea and other assorted drinks and snacks. Tom is akin to Cafe X, but doesn’t offer the same variety, and, at least from my viewing, sadly doesn’t perform any theatrics for customers. Tom does, however, sport a pair of bright eyes and a dapper chapeau for a more personal touch.

Tom and the Henn Na Cafe were installed in H.I.S. in February of last year because the travel agency thought that as people plan their vacations, they would like to discuss them in a cafe-like setting. But it wasn’t feasible for the company to dedicate staff to making lattes, so it brought Tom online.

Tom is actually two robots: the articulating arm, which shuttles cups and coffee grounds around, and the PourSteady, an automated pour-over coffee machine. Place an order for hot or iced coffee at the nearby kiosk and Tom whirrs into action. Three to four minutes later, Tom pulls your finished coffee and sets it in a small case for people to pick up. Though unlike other coffee robots, this is just a plain case with no screen or anything to indicate whose drink is up. But that probably isn’t as necessary, given H.I.S. is a travel agency first, and the cafe is more of a, pardon the pun, perk.

Since I was in town, and Grendeizer wasn’t flying overhead, I popped to make a quick video for you to see Henn Na Cafe’s Tom for yourself.

Tokyo's Henn Na Cafe Robot Cafe in Action

Meet MontyCafe, Russia’s Robot Barista

The robot revolution is heading to Russia, courtesy of MontyCafe, a self-contained, robotic barista is opening in Moscow this summer.

MontyCafe is a lot like the Cafe X coffee robot, which recently debuted on the streets of San Francisco. It’s an enclosed kiosk roughly five feet in diameter with two articulating arms that swing about to automatically serve up cups of coffee or other beverages.

You can see MontyCafe in action in this video:

MontyCafe: first robotic cafe franchise

The MontyCafe was spun out of industrial robot company GBL Robotics. I spoke with Pavel Zhdanov, who heads up Business Development for GBL, and the way he described MontyCafe, it seemed like it was more about the robot than the coffee.

In fact, you could better describe MontyCafe as more of an open robotic platform. Zhdanov outlined MontyCafe scenarios that included food like muffins and hot dogs, and the company is even exploring the robot dispensing soft serve ice cream. This is the advantage of using robotic arms. Unlike a Briggo, which is more of a self-contained, high-end vending machine, parts on MontyCafe’s robotic arms can be swapped out to lift, hold and serve just about anything you program them to.

Zhdanov said that a MontyCafe costs $20,000 and that the company is still working on an exact business model, though he mentioned franchises and revenue share as likely possibilities. The first one will go live in Moscow’s Aviapark mall this summer. Zhdanov said the company is already fielding incoming interest from potential customers in Kuwait and Australia.

MontyCafe’s technology may not be groundbreaking, and it could even be considered lagging (it’s not plumbed directly into water lines and humans still need to clean it every night). But it does highlight how robots are poised to radically change the way we buy coffee and other consumables around the world. As mentioned earlier, Cafe X is already in two locations in San Francisco, and Briggo will launch in the Austin, TX airport next week.

The plan for all these companies is the same: use robots to make coffee in high-traffic areas. They are meant for volume production, when people want to grab a cup of coffee on the go quickly. The one disadvantage I see for MontyCafe is that the quality of the coffee being dispensed could vary from location to location. Both Briggo and Cafe X have good coffee as part of their core mission. I didn’t get that sense from Zhdanov, and if customers get weak or otherwise bad coffee from MontyCafe, they probably won’t try it again because unlike having different baristas, there is only one robot making things the exact same way every time. Though the MontyCafe’s versatility to dispense anything could help the overall business make up for any specific coffee deficiencies.

All of this coffee robot news had The Spoon founder, Mike Wolf, pondering if and when Starbucks will get into the robot barista business. Robots seem like the perfect way for Starbucks to deliver a consistent, quality, coffee experience at scale, and they are already in so many high-traffic areas, it makes sense for at least some of their locations.

Starbucks is undoubtedly exploring the idea and watching to see how people react to Cafe X and Briggo and now probably MontyCafe. If Starbucks buys into robot baristas, the robot coffee revolution won’t just be in America and Russia, it will be everywhere.

Our Robot Coffee Future is Nigh: Briggo Barista Taking Off at Austin Airport

Austin, TX will get a little more hip (as if that were possible) next week as Briggo’s robotic Coffee Haus will land at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport on July 17th. Briggo says it will be the first robot coffee maker in a U.S. airport, but more importantly it’s another sign that robot baristas are on their way into the mainstream.

We profiled Briggo earlier this year and chatted with them for our Automat podcast. The Austin-based company not only builds 40 square foot craft coffee dispensing kiosks, it also selects and roasts its own specialty coffee specifically for its machines.

Briggo’s plans for the Austin airport have been public for a while, but the imminent launch of the barista bot is most interesting because it comes on the heels of Cafe X’s recent deployment of its own robot barista-in-a-box on the streets of San Francisco. Both companies are looking to create turnkey craft coffee solutions for high-traffic areas such as office buildings, campuses and airports.

Both Briggo and Cafe X will own and operate their machines. In the case of Cafe X, they still want to have a human on site with each robot to help guide people and curate their coffee experience. Briggo’s approach is more hands off, using humans only for re-stocking and required maintenance.

Though Briggo and Cafe X currently only have plans to grow in their specific areas — Texas and the Bay Area, respectively — each company says they have been fielding interest from around the world. And it’s not hard to see why. Coffee baristas like these are not your grandfather’s watered-down coffee vending machine. They both craft high-end coffee drinks, do so without taking a break or calling in sick, and are built to handle high volumes of people.

When I spoke with Briggo Co-Founder and CTO, Chas Studor this year, he was insistent that Briggo is not out to kill the café or replace every barista. He believes that for times when you just want to grab a cup of coffee quickly (like at the airport), robots are better suited for the task — and if you can build a robot that creates a good latté (or cappuccino or mocha…), people will raise their coffee expectations and visit people-powered high-end coffee shops more.

We’ll have to wait and see if that logic takes off, but starting next week, any hipsters traveling between Austin and San Francisco should sample both robot-made drinks and tell us what they think!