{"id":4831,"date":"2017-07-30T23:05:30","date_gmt":"2017-07-30T23:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/?p=4831"},"modified":"2023-07-13T01:33:16","modified_gmt":"2023-07-13T01:33:16","slug":"a-robot-served-ice-cream-at-bi-rite-creamery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/local\/a-robot-served-ice-cream-at-bi-rite-creamery\/","title":{"rendered":"A robot served ice cream at Bi-Rite Creamery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Robot serving ice cream\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_KNQxKzjvnE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yesterday just before 7 PM I got an unexpected series of texts from a friend:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I got ice cream from a robot<br>I&#8217;m at 18th and Dolores.<br>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There&#8217;s a robot here<br>Bi-Rite Creamery<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Intrigued, I texted back letting her know I was on the way; what sort of maniac could say no to watching a robot serve ice cream? I raced over from BART, practically running down 18th Street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The &#8220;robot&#8221; as it turned out was a pair of robot arms attached to a mannequin torso, sitting on a table under a tent on the sidewalk outside Bi-Rite Creamery. A guy waving around a pair of HTC Vive controllers caused the two arms to scoop up ice cream and sprinkles &#8212; for free &#8212; to robot and\/or ice cream fans passing by the creamery on 18th Street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Not wanting to spoil my appetite for dinner, I declined the ice cream, but happily watched as others partook. My friend said the ice cream was oddly flavored with a mix of blueberry and anise, but is the taste really the point? Much like robot arm serving coffee in Cafe-X in the Metreon, sometimes it&#8217;s the mechanized process that&#8217;s the star, not the resulting food products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The robot did seem to have a camera in its &#8220;head,&#8221; and I noticed there was an unused Vive virtual reality headset sitting on the table. The desktop PC controlling everything had a high-end GeForce GTX graphics card glowing from under the case&#8217;s grill which seemed capable of driving the headset. When I asked the operator if the VR headset worked with this contraption he confirmed that it does, though he said it&#8217;s difficult to see what he&#8217;s doing while wearing the headset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Perhaps in the future this might be addressed. At that point it&#8217;s only a matter of time before a remote operator could use this device to serve ice cream, then a few years down the line the contraption could be fully automated with artificial intelligence to remove the need for a human operator at all, thus putting hard-working ice cream scoopers out of a job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For now though this device not only requires a human operator, but also requires the recipient of the dessert to carefully move their bowl as the ice cream drops out of the serving spoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u00a0<br>Watch my video above to see this somewhat chaotic process in action, and check out some photos in the gallery below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-f56f613f wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/mrericsir\/36140112741\/in\/dateposted\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4292\/36140112741_934c5db9b5_m.jpg\" alt=\"Ice cream robot at Bi-Rite Creamery\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/mrericsir\/36140122731\/in\/dateposted\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4326\/36140122731_3c7376a940_m.jpg\" alt=\"Ice cream robot at Bi-Rite Creamery\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-f56f613f wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/mrericsir\/36231845976\/in\/dateposted\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4314\/36231845976_82dc4f2b28_m.jpg\" alt=\"Ice cream robot at Bi-Rite Creamery\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/mrericsir\/35879334920\/in\/dateposted\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4297\/35879334920_d751918235_m.jpg\" alt=\"Ice cream robot at Bi-Rite Creamery\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday just before 7 PM I got an unexpected series of texts from a friend: I got ice cream from a robotI&#8217;m at 18th and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","slim_seo":{"title":"A robot served ice cream at Bi-Rite Creamery - MrEricSir.com","description":"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_KNQxKzjvnE Yesterday just before 7 PM I got an unexpected series of texts from a friend: I got ice cream from a robot I'm at 18"},"autoblue_enabled":true,"autoblue_custom_message":"","autoblue_shares":[],"autoblue_post_url":"","autoblue_publish_document":false,"_slim_seo_primary_term_category":0,"_slim_seo_primary_term_post_tag":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[1213,1211,1212,38,1099],"class_list":["post-4831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local","tag-automation","tag-bi-rite","tag-ice-cream","tag-photos","tag-robots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4831"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9950,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4831\/revisions\/9950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}