Robot baristas help customers social distance in South Korea

South Korea is showing the rest of the world how to social distance in style. The lengths people go to for coffee…

You know that awkward moment when you’re approached by a needy waiter at a local café and have to reassure them that your order is ‘delicious’ through a mouthful of carrot cake? Well, that’s no longer an issue at a nifty joint in Daejeon, South Korea. 

As the nation loosens its strict stance on lockdown and heads towards what the government is calling ‘distancing in daily life’, a café in Daejeon has come up with an ingenious solution to keep customers fed and watered without a single human involved in the process. This is an introvert’s dream. 

According to Lee Dong-bae, the director of research at Vision Semicon, robots could be the key to preserving a semblance of social distancing when people are allowed to roam freely once again. And his team has decided the ideal HQ to test this hypothesis will be a local café – presumably over their own morning mochas.

Beginning with a single establishment, Vision Semicon is looking to transform the café experience into an entirely automated one nation-wide. We’re talking robot baristas, servers, cleaners… the whole caboodle. According to Reuters, hordes of customers will make their order through a kiosk; prompting a robot arm to prep over 60 variants of coffee with precision and speed. The steamy contents are then passed over to a serving robot who navigates the shop floor and rolls up to tables with and neat little tip like ‘It’s even better if you stir it’. Grab your stuff from the tray and tell it to do one. Those pesky machines will likely spoil the job market one day after all.