As I always say, if you show me a picture of a robot or an elephant, you will have my full and undivided attention. This happened to me recently when Matthew Cossel sent me a picture of a robot called ADAM serving drinks in a fast-food restaurant. This picture was accompanied by a message that essentially said: “Interested? Want to learn more?” To which I heard a little voice inside my head shouting, “YES!”

Before we proceed, I’d like to give a shout out to Matthew, who works for CORE IR. This is a small and feisty team of folks that provide Investor Relations, Capital Markets Advisory, Corporate Communications, and Public Relations services for small- to mid-sized companies. So, if you happen to be part of a small- to mid-sized company looking for any of these services, feel free to reach out to the folks at CORE IR and tell them, “Max says ‘Hi’” (not that they will have a clue who I am, of course, but it can’t hurt to imply that you know someone they should know, if you know what I mean).

Anyway, Matthew proceeded to introduce me to Timothy Tanksley, who is Director of Marketing at Richtech Robotics. I learned myriad nuggets of knowledge and tidbits of trivia in my chat with Timothy but—before we go there—let me share two photos of their ADAM robot serving drinks. The first is at a One Kitchen located in a Walmart in Rockford, IL (thereby making it the first humanoid drink robot in the state).

ADAM, at a One Kitchen in a Walmart in Rockford, IL (Source: Richtech Robotics)

The second photo shows an ADAM installed at a Ghost Kitchens located in a Walmart in Dawsonville, GA. I’d never even heard of Ghost Kitchens before this; now I can’t wait to learn more (behold the power of robots).

ADAM, at a Ghost Kitchens in a Walmart in Dawsonville, GA (Source: Richtech Robotics)

Timothy also informed me that an ADAM was the first humanoid bartender to serve cocktails at a 2024 MLB all-star game. Now, it must be acknowledged that the use of the “humanoid” descriptor is, perhaps, a tad enthusiastic on their part. ADAM certainly doesn’t look like any (well, many) members of my family. Having said this, I must admit that if I lived near any of these installations, I wouldn’t be writing this column but would instead be racing over there to quaff a tasty beverage myself (quaffing is like regular drinking except—in my experience—you tend to dribble more down your chest).

What? You want to see an ADAM in action? You had only to ask. Here’s a video of the ADAM serving coffee at the Ghost Kitchens in Dawsonville, GA.

I think we can all agree that this is a taste of things to come (no pun intended), but there’s much more to the story of ADAM than this.

I’m always interested in the back stories to companies like Richtech Robotics. How many people work there? How did they come to be? Let’s start with the fact that there are currently around 50 people working at Richtech Robotics but—based on what I’ve seen—I wouldn’t be surprised to see them grow at an exponential rate.

The company was formed by two brothers, Wayne and Michael Huang. Wayne has a background in hospitality, while Michael’s background is in finance. The brothers started a company selling various electronics products close to 20 years ago, but it wasn’t until 2016 that they started their move into robotics.

They began by developing autonomous mobile robots (AMRs)—that is, robots that can move around performing tasks like delivering things in evolving environments—for use in hotels. Their first units were food delivery robots that conveyed food from the kitchen to the dining room in the hotel’s restaurant. This relieved servers from the tedious task of trudging around transporting heavy trays back and forth all day. Instead, the servers transitioned into floor managers, remaining on the floor and connecting with the guests.

From this, the company expanded to provide robots that could deliver food and other items like toilet rolls and towels directly to the guests’ rooms. As soon as Timothy told me this, I had a flashback to a recent hotel stay of my own. A few weeks ago, as a birthday treat, I took my wife (Gina the Gorgeous) on a long weekend getaway to see the Ark Encounter (“A life-size Noah’s Ark”) and the Creation Museum (“Bible history comes to life!”) in Kentucky.

All I can say is that this is the biggest Ark I’ve personally seen, and that these two institutions certainly go out of their way to answer any questions you may have as to the presence of dinosaurs on the Ark. What? Of course there were dinosaurs on the Ark. How else could they have survived the flood? And, of course, Noah didn’t take adult dinosaurs. He only had room for their teenage equivalents. Otherwise, in the case of creatures like adult brontosauruses (or brontosauri), Noah would have had to cut holes in the upper deck to let their heads stick out. In addition to making Noah a laughingstock, this would have let the rain in (Good Grief! Do I have to explain everything?).

But we digress… Back to my hotel encounter. This was an establishment where they replace your sheets and towels only every third day or so (if they feel like it) because they are on a mission to save something or other (they say they are trying to save the planet, but I have a sneaking suspicion they are more interested in saving themselves money).

Be this as it may, Gina and I came to a point on the second evening when we needed more towels, so I ambled down the corridor and caught the elevator to the lobby. As I exited the elevator, I crossed paths with a nice young man who cheerfully bid me a good evening. When I reached the reception desk, there was no one to be seen, just a sign on the desk saying something like “You are SOL” (I think they phrased it differently—something along the lines of “Please stand here twiddling your thumbs while we attend to other guests who are more important than you”).

After about 10 minutes of thumb twiddling, the night manager returned. It was the selfsame young man who had entered the elevator as I exited it. It took only a few seconds for him to load me up (or load me down) with a stack of towels so high I couldn’t find my way back to the elevator, let alone press any of its buttons.

I’m sure you can understand how the thought of being able to place a call to room service (possibly communicating via a natural language AI interface) and request things like food and towels that were quickly and efficiently delivered to your room by an autonomous robot would be attractive, not least that there would be no need to engage in conversation or take part in a tipping ritual when the delivery took place.

Anyway, to cut a long story short (which is opposite to the way I usually like to do things), Richtech Robotics subsequently branched out into things like Medbot, which performs deliveries of things like medical supplies is hospitals, Matradee Plus, which can deliver food in places like offices and nursing homes, Titan, which streamlines parts delivery in industrial and manufacturing settings, and DUST-E MX, which revolutionizes floor cleaning operations in airports, shopping centers, supermarkets, schools and universities (pretty much any building that’s large and has a floor).

All of which leads us back to ADAM, which is described as “The AI-powered bartender, barista, and boba maker that wows customers and boosts your bottom line.” More recently, they’ve introduced Scorpion, which is essentially a robotic bartender in the form of an arm that “leverages intelligent voice recognition to understand and act on multi-language commands with ease, creating an engaging experience.”

On the one hand, we aren’t yet able to experience the conversational ability and speedy dexterity offered by the unnamed robot bartender in the retro-futuristic Hello Tomorrow, or Arthur the robot bartender in the science fiction film Passengers (which was a much better movie than many reviews would lead you to believe).

On the other hand, robot bartenders like ADAM and Scorpion would have been the stuff of dreams only a few short years ago. Think about it. The first cell phones with cameras didn’t appear until circa 2000. The first iconic smartphone in the form of the iPhone didn’t appear until 2007, and the first iPad tablet computer didn’t arrive until 2010, which is only 14 years ago as I pen these words. Now we can be served liquid refreshments by robot bartenders (well, we can if we visit a Walmart in Dawsonville, GA or Rockford, IL, which is “better than a poke in the eye with a robotic finger,” as the soon-to-be old saying goes).

But I fear I’ve rambled, ruminated, and waffled for longer than I should. What say you? What do you think about all of this?