"HENN NA CAFE"
A robot cafe in the HIS Shibuya store on the 1st basement floor of Shibuya MODI. This cafe, which opened on February 1, 2018, became a hot topic when it first opened.
It's been three years since the store opened, but the robots are still in business. If you haven't experienced it yet, please experience the fun and potential of Robot Cafe.
Challenge to Robot Cafe
Initially, this project started with the story of HIS Chairman Sawada, "Why don't you run a cafe with a robot?"
After thinking about some ideas and proposing a cafe using a collaborative arm robot that was just beginning to hit the market at that time, it was adopted and production began.
Unusual for industrial robots, the selected arm robot Sawyer has a face and is characterized by a comical look.
Is it really feasible?
Take the cup, set it in the cafe machine, and operate the buttons and levers of the cafe machine to provide the finished drink to the customer. I also make drip coffee. A task that was relatively easy for humans was a complex task for robots. Cups and drippers, hard and soft objects to grab, must be created to ensure that they are operated and provided. If you think about it so far, you can think of it as a robot function, but that is not enough in terms of cost and time. Robot It is not the beginning of the idea of a robot-friendly environment that matches the surrounding environment with the robot.
Opening of Robot Cafe
It will take 6 months from the conception and the pre-opening day will be reached on January 30, 2018. Until then, we have faced and solved a number of issues. A particular problem was making sure that the robots and each piece of equipment were in the same position.
If it is a factory, it can be bolted to the floor, but as long as it is a store, the appearance is also important. Furthermore, it was necessary to consider the safety aspect because the robot environment and the human environment are mixed.
Evolution of robot cafe
The "strange" of a strange cafe is a strange thing that keeps changing.
Initially, only ice and hot coffee menus were available, but we will add product sales functions such as sweets and light meals, provide drinks such as frappe in the summer, and recently introduce the "QBIT service robot development platform". As a result, we are evolving by adding more complicated movements and a customer service function that detects the gender and direction of movement of the customer by image recognition and talks to them.
