Meet DRINKBOT 2.0 — the perfect blend of fashion, technology, and mixology. Created through a collaboration with BeagleBoard and renowned designer Anouk Wipprecht, the stylish outfit made its debut at Embedded World 2024. Available as either a dress or a suit, DRINKBOT 2.0 uses voice commands, the BeagleY-AI, and a built-in 3D-printed cocktail system to answer a very simple question: What if your outfit could also mix drinks?
As it turns out, that question is a lot less absurd than it sounds, especially for Wipprecht. Equal parts artist, designer, and electronics engineer, Wipprecht is one of the leading names in FashionTech, an ongoing trend in the fashion world that represents the intersection of fashion, engineering, science, and technology. DRINKBOT 2.0 also isn’t the first product of its kind released by Wipprecht either — or the second.
“[I’ve already made several] similar versions in the robotic cocktail dress genre,” she explained to Voxel Matters. “The DareDroid 2.0 in 2010 which required you to play truth-or-dare to get your drink, then a later version, the Drinkbot Dress, in 2015.”
Looking like it was taken directly from a Cyberpunk setting in all the best ways, DRINKBOT 2.0 is a big step up from Wipprecht’s earlier designs. While the original Drinkbot Dress featured a single peristaltic pump and was only capable of mixing gin-and-tonics, DRINKBOT 2.0 has six. This allows the outfit to mix up a wide range of complex cocktails — and here’s where it gets really exciting.
DRINKBOT 2.0 can be operated largely through voice commands. This is made possible through its computing hardware, which includes the BeagleY-AI and its Texas Instruments AM67A Arm-based SOC. Here’s the basic play-by-play of how it works:
- The outfit picks up speech through an onboard Lavalier microphone.
- The audio from the microphone is fed into a USB sound card onboard the BeagleY-AI.
- The BeagleY-AI processes the spoken audio into text commands using its digital signal processing cores and text-to-speech software.
- The commands run on the AM67A’s Arm cores, which transmits them to an Adafruit DC & Stepper Motor HAT.
- The motor activates the relevant combination of pumps, pushing liquors, bases, and syrups through small silicon tubes and into a waiting glass, held in place by the outfit’s 3D-printed cup holder.
In addition to the components mentioned above, the outfit also features a liquid holder belt, an Adafruit DC, and a USB power bank.
Supporting Smarter Clothing Through Open-Source Hardware
Roughly the size of a business card, BeagleY-AI is capable of running roughly 4 trillion operations per second without generating significant heat. For deep learning and general-purpose digital signal processing, BeagleY-AI relies on the Texas Instruments AM67A SoC’s quad-core 64-bit Arm CPU subsystem and wide range of accelerators.
As impressive as these characteristics may be, they weren’t the primary reason Wipprecht chose BeagleY-AI for her project. She did so because of our dedication to open-source hardware and software.
“Being a big supporter of open-source, it is important for me to work with companies that stimulate and promote open-source because it fosters innovation and collaboration,” explained Wipprecht. “In this case, open-source gives users ownership and transparency towards their design process.”
Raising a Glass to the Future of Fashion
Wipprecht plans to share the full instructions for DRINKBOT 2.0 in the near future. In the meantime, you can check out some of her other projects, including dresses that generate a smokescreen upon detecting a nearby person, attack with mechanical limbs if anyone gets too close, and paint their own constantly shifting designs.
As you can see, Wipprecht is completely unafraid to get weird with her designs, which, according to her website, are meant to make fashion an experience that transcends mere appearances. She’s definitely accomplished as much with DRINKBOT 2.0. We can’t help but look forward to seeing what else she uses our hardware to achieve.
BeagleY®-AI is available for order now with availability from BeagleBoard.org® distributors around US$70 arriving now. For detailed documentation or to explore some of our other products, visit www.beagleboard.org.