Scientists Create a Beer-Fetching Robot

June was a bad month for our non-blooded, mechanical friends when a four-ton robot in the employ of BP “bumped into the ‘top hat’ cap and damaged one of the vents that removes excess fluid,” temporarily increasing the rate of oil flowing into the gulf.

But July has seen a quick turn-around, despite BP’s refusal to listen to our suggestions of Robots We’d Send to Stop The Oil Leak. First, Futurama is back on the air, along with our favorite wisecracking robot Bender. But more importantly, the guys at Willow Garage spent a week creating a robot that will fetch and open their beer.

Yes, robot + beer = awesome.

The project was the part of the company’s third annual Hackathon, concepting on a Monday and demoing on a Friday. Using the web-based Beer Me app, anyone in the office can now order up one of several different bottles of beer that the PR2 can identify, deliver and uncap.

“We wanted to make very sure the robot didn’t commit a party foul and drop beers on the floor, so we added face detection to the handoff behavior,” the company’s website reads. “The robot offers a beer and waits until it detects a face in near proximity. It then looks at the closest person and will release the gripper when the beer is tugged. The robot will also offer the bottle opener and wait for it to be returned. We even got the robot to open beers itself using a standard bottle opener.”

Programmers of Willow Garage, we congratulate you on creating our new favorite robot, and if you need to test the PR2 in other environments, we humbly volunteer the Paste office.