Pretty much ever since DIY robotics went mainstream, nerdy booze enthusiasts have been building robotic bartenders to help them mix perfect cocktails. We’ve seen dozens of examples in the past, ranging from wildly elaborate bots that fill an entire room, to compact ones that fit nicely on your countertop — and more seem to pop up with each passing month.
The latest addition to the rapidly-growing family of booze-bots is Somabar. Now, normally the announcement of yet another hooch-dispensing contraption like this wouldn’t be that noteworthy, but this one is different. Unlike some of the others we’ve seen, Somabar has the unique ability to mix and dispense a cocktail in under five seconds.
To pump out craft cocktails at such a blistering pace, the machine uses some seriously innovative techniques. As soon as you order a drink, Somabar measures and extracts the necessary ingredients from its pre-filled pods. Liquids are drawn out with specially engineered positive-displacement pumps, so the extraction is both fast and precise.
Immediately after being pumped out of the pods, all of the liquids are channeled through Somabar’s static mixing tube, which agitates and blends everything together as it passes through. Next, bitters are added to the mixture just before it flows out through a downspout and into your glass. The entire process happens within just a few seconds.
As if that wasn’t awesome enough, Somabar is also Wi-Fi connected and app-enabled. With the help of its accompanying smartphone app, the machine knows thousands of different drink recipes — all of which can be tweaked and adjusted to fit your preferences. You don’t even have to know what you want to make; Somabar can even suggest new drinks based on the ingredients you’ve loaded into the pods
To bring this contraption out of the lab and get it into your kitchen, Somabar’s creators have recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for manufacturing. You can currently pre-order a Somabar for a pledge of $400, and since the project has already surpassed its $50,000 funding goal, it’s a fairly safe bet that the device will eventually show up on your doorstep. If all goes as planned, the team expects to ship Somabar to backers sometime around July of 2015.
