WATCH: Make Way For Malta’s Cool New Drink-Serving, Cocktail-Making Robot Plant
The 2018 edition of Science in the City this weekend is gearing up to be full of fun and creative sights to get you thinking. Artists and scientists from all over the island come together to collaborate on some pretty cool projects, showing everyone how art and science work hand in hand.
Fablab Valletta is one such example, collaborating with the Mediterranean Culinary Academy (MCA) to create a real head-scratcher.
Ro-botanical is the brainchild of Fablab Valletta’s Suzie Mifsud and Joe Galea, both of whom studied interactive design on the topic of self-sufficiency. Marrying science and food, the installation presents a super cool insight into the future of our relationship with nature, farming and food.
The installation itself is an interactive bar using hydroponics technology and capacitance sensors to grow plants and serve drinks. In non-science babble, this means the Ro-botanical system can serve up a drink at the touch of a plant, turning a living organism into a literal robot!
Food technology has itself been around for thousands of years, but Ro-botanical hopes to kick off the conversation into new lines of research for food and technology, with our very own Valletta as a testing ground.
The MCA will also be at hand, preparing a selection of nibbles to pair with all your Ro-botanical-prepared drinks on the night.