While the Denver Broncos may be in the midst of a losing season, they could win over fans this weekend when a new robot starts dispensing Bud Light at Mile High Stadium (h/t The Washington Post).
You’d think that such a mechanical miracle would have a fancy name like the “Robo-Bronco” or the “Elway 3000,” but no, it’s just called UR5e. Created by Universal Robots and MSI Tec, UR5e is a robotic arm that can pick up an empty cup fill it with beer and set it down to serve a customer. You can see it action in this video.
What’s more impressive to me in that video is not so much the robot — between Cafe X, Flippy, MontyCafe and Ekim, there are plenty of autonomous articulating arms out there — but that the beer is dispensed from the bottom of the cup. What sort of wizardry is this? Evidently the flow is controlled by a magnet, which is a cool, but seems to an an extra layer of waste to an already wasteful single use cup.
Stadiums like Mile High are where we will most likely see even more robots coming online to serve us in 2019. Flippy spent the past summer making chicken tenders at Dodger Stadium. Miso Robotics (which makes Flippy) counts hospitality company Levy as an investor, and Levy runs a number of sport and entertainment venues.
As we’ve said before, stadiums are a good use case for robots as they are high-traffic, high-volume settings. Robots can sit and repeat the same task over and over, churning out food or beverages non-stop throughout a game.
Plus, getting robots in concession stands gets us one closer to robots on the field, playing the rock ’em, sock ’em, football.