Sensing: Make Your Own F-ing Drink

The goal of today's session is to create a narrative around sensing technology. We have to come up with an idea or a scenario where we can apply the use of this sensing technology. This idea can be realistic, fictional, or speculative.

"Sensing here allows for multiple interpretations. Sensing can be understood as a method of collecting data through analog or digital means. It can mean the process of making sense of something. Making sense of a thing, a place, a situation, through observation or experimentation."

Andreas Schlegel

We team up in a group of 3-4, my group included me, Guli, Jeesoo, and Roanna. We came up with a fun and interactive, completely personalized robotic bartender. We want this bartender to have a personality, a sassy one to be exact, in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way. 

The idea is to create your own customized drink, using TensorFlow. It is a sensing program that can detect common everyday objects, we can also upload our own unique data for the program to recognize. For our bartender, we created a system where customers can create their own drink, starting by what kind of fruits they would like to incorporate. The idea is that we would provide a bowl of fresh fruit for them to choose from and then they would show it in front of a computer for the program to recognize the fruit. The next step would be for them to choose the alcohol base. It's the same idea as the fruit, we would provide a mini bottle of alcohol type and brands for them to choose from and show it to the computer to recognize. The last step would be the type of glass for their drinks to come in, again, the same process as before where the customers will show their chosen glass to the computer. The last step, where it is optional, would be the garnish for their drink.

If the computer fails to recognize any of the items shown, customers would be able to put down their choices manually. We used items around the school as a test for the program and indeed it is able to recognize glasses/bowls and fruits. So this project is totally do-able and realistic.