At last! A really useful robot!

A new robotic barman called Mr. Asahi is touring the world showing off his skills. He began this week in Selfridges of London. Mr Asahi. The life-size robot is controlled by PC software which directs compressed air through assorted valves. Sounds wonderfully steampunk to me.

The result is a robot that serves beer quicker than the average human barperson. There’s only one slight drawback (apart from the quarter ton weight and the £100,000 price tag): Mister Asahi currently only serves Asahi beer.

Many of the things that we humans take for granted are notoriously difficult for robots. One of these is simply finding their way round an unknown building. Despite the sophisticated sonsor technology and availability of GPS etc, human buildings are “messy”. People walk around in them, leave things laying around and do inconsiderate things such as closing doors. That makes it difficult for the robot AI to build up a coherent picture of its surroundings.

Tartalo is an attempt to solve these problems. A project by the Department of Computational Sciences and Artificial Intelligence at Computer Science Faculty in the Basque city of Donostia-San Sebastián, Tartalo is a 1.5 metre tall robot that wanders around the corridors of the building. It uses biomimetic systems the explore and learn about its surroundings.

What makes this robot so interesting is its politeness. If it finds a closed door it wants to enter then it “knocks” using its feet and waits for someone to let it in!

I wonder how it reacts if someone shouts “Go away, I’m in the shower”?