Yes. Such a shirt exists. And it’s a good thing, too, what with the assemblage of beer serving robots that we’ve been treated to over the last week. Yours from ThinkGeek for $20.

[ ThinkGeek ]

Baxter may not have arms, and he may look just like a trashcan, but that’s not going to stop him bringing you a beer. At least, as long as he has help from his trusty sidekick, RoboFridge. Baxter and RoboFridge together form the BDS, or Beer Delivery System. As long as no stairs are involved, Baxter will use an impressive variety of navigation techniques (including wheel encoders, line following, and homing beacons) to make his way from wherever you are to RoboFridge. Once there, RoboFridge opens, spits out a can into Baxter’s maw, and then closes again, and Baxter will retrace his non-steps back to you.

Apparently, Baxter is only the first phase of a system designed to solve the issue of beer being over there and me being over here. Also, there are many other things that are over there and I’m still over here, and Baxter can be adapted to carry all pretty much whatever you want. Say, chips, for example. Mmm, chips.

Since so far, none of these beer serving robots have spontaneously appeared next to my couch, I’m going to go take care of the problem myself. Cheers!

[ Norris Labs ] VIA [ CNet ]

This is it… PR2 has finally reached its full potential: beer delivery. After many long hours teaching the robot to not ever bring anyone a Bud Light under any circumstances, Willow Garage has successfully completed their beer delivery hackathon. PR2 can now take orders for different kinds of beer, locate the fridge, open the door, scan all the different bottles and locate the tasty ones, pick them up, and then bring them back to you using facial recognition software to tell when it’s found a thirsty person. Oh, and it even remembers to close the fridge door.

And it opens bottles.

If it would just pour the beer into my mouth, I’d never have to move again.

Of course, there are lots of ways to go about getting a beer, and not everybody is going to have the same sort of fridge setup, so some tweaking will be required to get this software working robustly in your house on the PR2 that you don’t have yet. Remember, though, that all of their code is modular and open source, so it’ll be easy for others to take on each module (fridge opening, beer IDs, etc) and adapt them for other fridges and other tastes in beer. I have it on good authority that the Willow Garage team plans to put in many long hours honing their beer delivery software, testing it rigorously to make sure that the PR2 can deliver, say, a bottle of Guinness to a person over and over (and over) without shaking the bottles or spilling a drop. Yep, that’s gonna take a lot of testing, but it’s for science, so it’s worth it.

I stopped by Willow Garage late last week to see this whole process in action, and while it may take a little while (note the time compression on the video), it’s still pretty wild that they put this together in such a short amount of time. And like, the robot brings you beer, how can you not just totally geek out about that?

Don’t forget that there are 11 other PR2s on the loose now, and if this hackathon is any indication, we’re entitled to expect some pretty great stuff in the near future.

[ Willow Garage ]

One facet of RoboCup 2010 was the RoboCup@Home competition, which aims to “foster the development of useful robotic applications that can assist humans in everyday life.” Obviously, such applications must being with fetching beer from a fridge.

The robot in the video above is Dynamaid, from team NimbRo at the University of Bonn. It took second overall in the RoboCup@Home competition, which also included events like shopping in an actual supermarket. For chips. To go with the beer. Obviously, robots are getting smarter.

[ Dynamaid @Home ]

…At least, as long as PR2 doesn’t pick the Bud Light.

[ Willow Garage ]