Robotically Served Soft Serve

A few weeks ago, Yukari and I went to Matsumoto, in Nagano prefecture, along with our friend Carrie, who was visiting us. Mastsumoto is home to a famous castle and a bunch of onsen.

Whenever we go someplace new in Japan, we make inevitable stops at two kinds of stores: ceramics and Japanese sweets. We now have way more teacups than friends, thanks to Yukari’s pottery mania.

In Matsumoto, a friend of Yukari’s had recommended she go to one particular Japanese sweets shop. I’m pretty cool on traditional Japanese candies. The kind of desserts are, not surprisingly, heavily conditioned by your childhood. Give me a Butterfinger and I’ll definitely be jonesin’ for another. A little ball of sweetened rice stuffed with red bean paste just doesn’t do it for me.

So, it was with a stifled yawn that I went into the shop with Yukari and Carrie. It was huge — easily larger than our house in Chicago. All sorts of rice-y treats lay inside of perfectly cleaned display cases.

As I looked around, I saw a bunch of people eating ice cream at one end of the shop. This was a bit odd, because the temperature was positively arctic. When I went down to check it out, though, I almost wet myself. These guys had taken an industrial robot, stuck some wacky details on it and taught it how to dispense soft serve ice cream!

It was pure genius. Until you placed your order, the robotic arm went through this cool attract routine. It would pick up a little sponge and pretend to clean with a slick little sweeping motion. It had a little flag, on which the flavor of the day was written, that it would wave around. It preened, it flexed.

Needless to say, I ordered a cone (flavor of the day: banana). The ice cream was fine, but watching the robot dispense it was totally worth the 250 yen (~$2.50).

Picture below — I also have a little video I recorded that I’ll try to get online soon.

Posted by pmk at April 13, 2005 4:27 AM | TrackBack