With artisanal cocktails in vogue these days, it seems as though a new speakeasy is opening every other week here in Brooklyn. Now that reclaimed wood and Edison bulbs are de rigueur, Makr Shakr offers a rather more futuristic alternative to the dandily bow-tied, impeccably mustachioed barkeep. Sure, their slogan is an open-ended question—"What could you make with the power of three robots in your pocket?"—but surely a stiff drink is among the top responses. The drink-slinging robots were unveiled at the 2013 Milan Design Week and also made an official installation debut at the Google I/O on May 15, 2013. Getting the project ready was a team effort from groups atPentagram and the MIT Senseable City Lab.
Makr Shakr features three robots that make the drinks, but orders were taken via social media, and eventually the team developed an app for easier ordering and recipe sharing. “At the installation [in Milan], the data was coordinated through the app, and users could also share their drink orders through Facebook and Twitter," says Pentagram’s Kurt Koepfle. “Each user’s avatar became part of the data visualization showing the orders, where it was grouped and visualized alongside other users and their drinks."
Considering that data collection happened in Milan and the subsequent event at Google occurred a short week after the initial installation, there was little time for fine-tuning. But the toughest part wasn’t the time crunch: “Conceptually, the design challenge was transforming something as ordinary as ordering a drink at a bar into using an app to order drinks from robots, and have it be an enjoyable and seamless transaction," says Koepfle.
It sounds like a scene straight from a sci-fi film—and, honestly, it looks it, too. Check out the video to put it all into perspective:
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