Best Robot Ever Pours Beer When You Want It

Sure, we have robots making everything from noodles to cocktails nowadays, but a commercial robotic waiter of sorts is still in the works. Cornell's Personal Robotics Lab, however, is jazzing up a PR2 robot so it might just be able to pour your beer when you want it.

The robot, which is decked out with a Microsoft Kinect camaera and a database of 3-D videos, gradually learns to anticipate human actions. So if you pick up your cup and put it down, the robot will wait until you put down the cup to pour your some more beer. Not bad.

Of course, as Slate points out, it's awfully slow, and is only accurate in predicting human actions 82 percent of the time. The robot basically uses the same intelligence that Google autocomplete uses for search, which makes it slightly less effective. Researchers hope in the future the robots could be used for elderly care, which is a much better use of the technology than having an endless stream of beer.