The name of Tokyo coffee joint Henna Café roughly translates to ‘strange,’ and for good reason. It is staffed entirely by robots.
‘Sawyer,’ a US-designed AI robot, grinds coffee beans, controls automatic drip machines and offers customers their beverages. It will take Sawyer two to five minutes to prepare any one of the seven beverages being offered by the café.
“Based on customers’ responses, we want to open the same kind of cafes across the nation,” said an official from HIS, the travel agency behind the concept. The company also operates Henn-na Hotel, where robots take care of guests.
Sawyer may have his work cut out for him in the cut-throat world of the barista – Fabio, the grocery store robot in Scotland, was fired last week for utter incompetence.
