This bartender can serve 25 favorite cocktails up or on the rocks, but it can't light a cigarette or give romantic advice -- yet.
The Compact Drink Digital Bar, the brainchild of Uruguayan Miguel Lacurcia, 32, will automatically mix cocktails from rum punch to Daiquiris, from margaritas to tequila sunrises, all in a matter of 15 seconds.
Eleven upturned bottles are lined up along a rail above a multi-colored keyboard where drink requests can be tapped in, delivering customers' choices at the touch of a button.
"The secret is in the valves," confides Lacurcia, a certified electrical engineer, who came up with the inspiration for the machine one boozy night in Caracas when he and a group of friends emptied bottles of rum into a bucket and fed their glasses via a hose pipe somehow connected to a cash till.
"The machine will never beat a good barman, but that's not the goal," Lacurcia said, boasting that "two experienced barmen have told me it's going to be a great success."
The new-style "ethylometer," capable of memorizing the recipes for as many as 60 drinks, would be great for preparing cocktail bases or for use in bars and discotheques where clients want to buy fun, colorful drinks -- or for large-scale events full of thirsty guests.
The "Atomic" model of the Digital Bar is the result of 13 years of tinkering and experimenting by Lacurcia, who once had to spend an entire party reconnecting wiring.
Made from recycled materials, the Atomic comes complete with software, soda bottle tops and marker corks. Weighing in at 11kg, the Atomic measures 2.5m by 50cm.
A customer presses a white key for tonic water and a blue one to keep drinks fizz-free.
The machine, powered by 12 small motors, promises "thousands of combinations."
"Eleven of the motors lift the glass up against the neck of each bottle," explained Lacurcia, an employee of the building company Saceem, a subsidiary of French group Spi-Batignoles.
A windshield wiper motor is the power behind motor number 12, which sends the glass scuttling along a rail to pick up dispensed liquor.
Lacurcia will let the Atomic do the work at an upcoming party for software engineers and has arranged for it to be on display at a city exhibition later this month, before it goes on a two-month tour of nightclubs in the Uruguayan capital.
He hires out the machine for US$50 a night -- "without the ingredients" -- and is already thinking about producing a lighter, portable model -- the ideal companion, in fact, for a night on the town. This "mixological" wonder costs around US$2,000.
"The digital bar is also good for people who, as has happened with me, after a few drinks can't find the lemon juice or get the vodka mixed up with tequila," Lacurcia said.
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