Robot barista by S'pore startup offers a glimpse of the future
Powered by Nvidia, Asus IoT hardware.
It looked like just another robot barista. But I soon discovered this was different. And founder Keith Tan is already working on bigger plans involving AI.
I was invited to an Asus AIoT event on Friday. Right in the foyer area was a robot barista, of which I've seen more than one.
Except this one was different.
Manpower crunch
The genesis for Ella, as the robot barista is called, came from Keith's own experiences in F&B and the constant struggle with manpower - which came to a head one Monday morning.
With four fledging outlets, two employees from one called in sick that day. Frantic, Keith contacted another outlet for help, only to be told that its other worker had called in sick as well.
Left with no other recourse, Keith and his accountant rolled up their sleeves that day as waiter and barista. Keith did some introspection that day.
It went like this: "There are just 4 outlets now; what happens when I have a hundred outlets?"
Photo Caption: (Left) Ella is an industrial robotic arm. (Middle) Patented multi-dispenser can dispense wide range of sugar, syrup. (Right) Clever drink cubby design releases your coffee only to you.
A robot barista
And so Crown Digital IO was founded, which birthed forth Ella.
It's worth noting that Keith had zero IT background. Just a business sense, a problem to solve, and great determination.
The Ella unit I saw consists of:
- Order terminal.
- Coffee machines.
- Transparent display.
- A six-axis robot arm.
- Multi-syrup dispenser*.
- Multiple secured drink cubby*.
Users can order a cuppa with the touch screen terminal, by scanning a QR code, or through an app. The experience is incredibly seamless.
What caught my attention is what's under the hood. Ella is designed with a customised robot system, a modular design, and a middleware platform to stitch everything together.
Quick IT specifications:
- Asus IoT hardware.
- Nvidia RTX 4000 GPU.
- Key capabilities run locally.
- Internet-connected.
I was told there are 18 Ellas deployed today, with significant expansion plans beyond Singapore under negotiations.
Robotics with AI
What's next? Keith doesn't think small. Ella is constantly improved, and work is currently done to:
- Move to multi-agent design.
- Build everything around microservices.
- AI-powered communication.
The idea with AI is to recreate the friendly greetings of your human barista, maybe even bantering with you as the coffee is prepared.
All text-to-speech, speech-to-speech, and visual AI is processed using built-in AI hardware, with video fed in from a fish-eye camera. Crucially, context is maintained even with multiple waiting customers.
Why go to such lengths?
Well, Keith did share that his vision is to go into food. I suspect he's creating a versatile, AI-powered platform that can be expanded to do more than serve coffee.
What do you think of Ella?
