Alexa coffee-bot is a bit rubbish

Cute but disappointing. No, that’s not the feedback I got from an ex, I’m talking about a coffee-making robot. This adorable droid has been made by a couple of students.

The coffee-dealing automaton is the creation of David Frank and Carter Hurd.

This caffeine-addled duo ran Alexa on a Raspberry Pi and hooked up a microphone. They used an Arduino to control the coffee maker.

Arms, Alexa and empty scoops

The two students added a pair of arms to the machine: one for putting the coffee filter in its place and another for scooping coffee grounds.

The resulting coffee-bot is somewhere between a Mr Coffee and a Muppet.

[youtube id=”dH_PcpzAIy4″]

Unfortunately, the coffee scooping is a bit hit-or-total-miss. Mostly miss by the looks of things. The scoop in the video might give you a hint of coffee, at best.

What they can do, however is ask their googly-eyed coffee maker for the weather, or play their caffeine playlist.

At the moment, they can’t ask it to start making a brew. This process currently requires the human touch.

The students say their next goal is to get the machine to respond to “Alexa, make me coffee” with a fresh pot.

As I said, cute but disappointing. For now.