viz.

Image Credit: Briggo.com

There’s a coffee robot upstairs. I have never used it. Sometime earlier in the year—maybe over the winter break—a new, brightly colored store-front popped up in the Flawn Academic Center. It seemed to be selling coffee. It also seemed to be a robot. Rather than a counter with cash register, tip jar, and human barista, all the trappings we’ve come to expect , its front façade has screens and cups and coffee spouts.  From what I’ve seen you can order right there, off to the side on a touch screen, or online. Think about that, you could buy a cup of coffee while you read this. If the coffee robot teams up with a fleet of delivery robots we’d really be living in some kind of future.

Image Credit: tacocopter.com

I’ve walked past the coffee robot maybe half a hundred times. There are always people milling about—ordering coffee, buying coffee, receiving coffee from the coffee robot. They must, too, be drinking coffee, but my focus is on the robot, not the humans. It bears mentioning, though, that even while my focus is on the robot I’m curious about the human element involved here. And so while I’ve never actually tried the robot out I have heard about the experience from friends and colleagues. Apparently the coffee robot has service humans at its disposal. They blend into the crows—well, at the very least, they don’t stand out. I haven’t seen anyone in a bright orange Briggo shirt, anyway. But I believe that they’re there. In a world with coffee robots service humans seem necessary. 

Image Credit: Briggo.com

These human underlings seem to fill a necessary niche in the consumer chain. While most of our economic practices involve some blend of human/machine interaction—we might buy something online that’s built by robots and humans both then packaged, shipped, and delivered by humans and machines both, or we might buy a machine produced item from a human. With the coffee robot, though, the humans seem positioned to, rather than mediate the consumer/product relationship, simply facilitate a smooth interaction with the robot. They might be only temporary; perhaps they’re there to help nudge things along until we, generally, become used to our new coffee robot. But as it stands now they’re there  to service its needs, to make excuses and provide support for human error. 

Video Credit: Briggo.com

I’m intrigued by the coffee robot. I can’t help but wonder if it’s really doing all this work itself. Is it roasting the beans? grinding the beans? steeping the grounds? foaming the latte? That seems like a lot of work for a robot. Maybe the coffee robot is really a collection of coffee robots. We’re dealing with a robot community here—a machine multiplicity. It’s a bit disappointing that the Briggo coffee robot video doesn’t show us the meaty heart of the coffee robot itself—the video seems full of human created coffee. I suppose that its necessary to gently nudge people toward recognizing a robot as a competent barrista. Still, it does little to quell any suspicious that there might be humans hiding in the coffee robot. 

Image Credit: Briggo.com

While walking by I’ve noticed that there’s a door into the robot. Truth told, I’d much rather a robot have an access panel than a door, but you can’t win them all. People enter doors while they only interface with an access panel—you could feed milk and beans and water through the access panel. With a door I have to image that rather than simply feeding the robot the raw materials it needs the service humans have to fully enter and configure the raw materials within the robot. This is some sort of symbiotic relationship we’ve got going here. It would be as though our micro-flora and fauna not only helped out with digestion but took the time to gather food and bring it back inside us. Coffee robot has got it made—doesn’t even need to chew.