A café by day and a lounge by night, Ratio has robots working hand in hand with its F&B staff—“ratiologists”—to offer “super drinks and exceptional services to consumers.”

Ratio serves up close to 60 drinks, from authentic Nanyang kopi to artisanal coffees and inventive cocktails. But how does it exactly work?

Assuming you would like to order a Kopi-C Gao (thick coffee with milk), you are able to use an ordering kiosk to determine the strength of your coffee. The customized order will be sent to the robot via the Cloud. While one of the robotic arms will prepare the order by dispensing the correct amount of Kopi base milk and water, another will be used concurrently to Tarik (pull) the coffee between two canisters to bring out the Nanyang Kopi flavor.

For cocktails, the robot will pick up a glass and blast freeze it using compressed carbon dioxide. The robotic shaker will then collect the ice and the ingredients, shake or stir them and pour the mix into a glass. A “ratiologist” will then add garnishing to the cocktail, before serving it.

Founder and CEO Gavin Pathross told that there is a whole suite of proprietary software built into the robots—from order and inventory management systems to a CRM and POS system. On the hardware side of things, Ratio engineers have had to build some of their own kitchen equipment by “hacking and adding new IoT technology.”

For example, Gavin said that there was no ice-maker-dispenser that was able to dispense an exact quantity of ice required for cocktails through an IoT protocol. Hence, the engineers needed to create a new type of weight and dispensing mechanism that would be able to communicate with the cloud, and take inputs from users and operators. Such a precise mechanism is needed as in the world of cocktail making, “every addition 10 grams of ice will change the chemistry and taste of the drink very significantly.”

According to Kr Asia