This Cafe Is Using a Robot Barista to Avoid Spreading COVID

The robot can make 60 different types of coffee and can deliver them to customers as well.

Robot Barista

As South Korea recovers from the deadly coronavirus, businesses are getting creative to ensure their customers are safe. Case in point: a café in Daejon, South Korea has hired a robot barista to take care of making and busing drinks around, Reuters reports.

Thanks to the robot, the café only has to employ a single human, who takes care of making pastries, as well as servicing and refilling their robot coworker. The robot can make 60 different types of coffee and deliver them to customers around the café.

Untact

The company behind the robot, Vision Semicon, is hoping its fleet of mechanical workers could help while South Korean society adjusts to what officials are calling "distancing in daily life" — the next phase of the government's efforts to relax social distancing rules.

"Our system needs no input from people from order to delivery, and tables were sparsely arranged to ensure smooth movements of the robots, which fits will with the current ‘untact’ and distancing campaign," Lee Dong-bae, director of research at Vision Semicon, told Reuters.

A downside: even more jobs could be lost as a result of the coronavirus. South Korea's unemployment rate was not spared by the pandemic, which in April saw its largest decline since 1999.

More on robots: “Biobots” Will Serve Alongside South Korean Soldiers by 2024

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