Best. Beer Bot. Ever Made. (Recognizes You and Your Favorite Brew)

Beer bots are one of those items that are fascinating but make you fear for the future of mankind. It takes a considerable amount of engineering and programming expertise to design a robot that rolls around your home and brings you an ice cold IPA out of the fridge. And you have to wonder if all of that professional prowess couldn’t be better spent on a device that could better humanity rather than making it lazier and drunker. On the other hand, what avid beer drinker wants to make the fateful journey from couch to ice box?

No beer robot we’ve seen thus far better exemplifies the dubious nature of the robo-butler than this here PR2. The most advanced beer bot we’ve had the pleasure of witnessing, Willow Garage’s PR2 not only rolls into the kitchen to get you a beer, it recognizes which beer goes to which person. Through object and face detection the robot can recognize both people and decipher between beer labels. So if you have all your buddies over, this little automated genius will be able to get different brews for each one, if so desired. And it pops open the top to boot.

It would be really cool if the robot could take it one step further and automatically recognize your face and get your beer of choice the minute your bottom hits the couch. But, as is, PR2 is a pretty nice invention. If this ever becomes available, dog officially moves down a spot on the friend chart. [via Dvice]