PipeDream - The building of an Automatic Cocktail Maker

Exhibitor: Polly Alexander

Supervisor: Gordon Wyeth

Research Group: Complex and Intelligent Systems

Industry Sector: Tourism and Hospitality

Cocktails have fascinated and infatuated people since their inception in the prohibition period of nineteen twenties America, and now in the noughties the infatuation has taken on a new level. People still want the style of a shaken, stirred or layered drink, but now they want it faster, more accurate, at home, in a bar from untrained staff, and with exactly the right amount of ingredients, and that is where this project comes in, with the design of an automatic cocktail maker.

While the idea of an automatic cocktail maker is still relatively new, particularly in Australia, there are in existence both commercial and personal automatic alcohol-dispensing creations. Existing products produce drinks by simultaneously dispensing multiple liquids via a common tube, controlled and dispensed by a ‘bar gun’.

The very essence of the cocktail being a drink that is shaken or stirred is missing from all the existing automated cocktail makers, there is no consideration to drinks being served or mixed with ice, no consideration of cross contamination between consecutively poured drinks, limitations on ingredients due to use of liquor bottles for storage, and little room for expansion into a home environment.

The intention of this thesis was to design and build a mechanism capable of dispensing and mixing cocktails at a ‘proof of concept’ level considering aspects of redesign needed to turn initial design into a marketable prototype machine. It is hoped that once marketed an automatic cocktail machine would be able to be used in both commercial and home applications. Automation of cocktail making would allow uniformity of drink quality and remove reliance on trained personnel. It is also important when automating anything to appreciate the interest in new gadgets and exciting machinery that adds to potential use.