Universidad Veritas FabLab
The addition of different types of technology to coffee industry would all have different effects, some positive and some negative. For example, drone technology would be able to be utilized as a delivery system. Entrepreneurs in Amsterdam have been working on a drone called the Coffee Copter that would delivery a fresh cup of coffee of the customers choice to the customer with the tap of a finger on an app. This virtually allows the consumer to grab a cup of coffee without hindrance from his/her current duties. A variety of things could be changed utilizing 3D printing in the coffee industry. Probably the best being that it could help with packaging, or components of a package. For instance, at Cafe Britt, the bag was designed with aluminum foil on the inside however there was a plastic piece on the bag that was there to ensure that no oxygen got into the coffee. It would be much cheaper to make these plastic pieces using 3D printers because it is an additive process, so no material would be getting wasted along the way, or perhaps an entirely new design could be created using 3D printing alone.
A spot in which automation could be used, is at coffee farms. In order for coffee beans to dry they need to be placed in the ground and raked every hour during sunlight. Having technology designed to complete this task, would take away some of the responsibility and tediousness on the workers part. However, this technology could also take a lot of jobs away.
In terms of picking coffee beans, I believe it is best if this is done traditionally. A coffee bean is not ripe unless it is red, and usually buyers select the type of coffee bean they would like. It's fair to assume that it would take an immediately long time before any machine would be able to precisely pick what bean is good and what is not. This is most fundamentally human knowledge.
Very interesting. It's hard to imagine that some day we will have technology that can essentially take over jobs that we humans do.
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