Robot dog serves beer in Seville to keep table service Covid-safe
Man's best friend can also come in robotic form - and even serve you a beer.
Drinkers in Seville, Spain are being served by a helpful robodog named Spot who delivers their drinks to help prevent the spread of Covid-19.
Created by Boston Dynamics and Spain-based Macco Robotics, Spot is doing the table service instead of staff to maintain safety measures.
Before the pandemic, robots like Spot were sometimes used as a marketing tool to grab attention at events.
But with robots now designed to pull a pint - like Cart the tabletop robot - could they be giving human bar staff a run for their money?
"I think that in times of pandemic it is very good that there is a robot serving drinks so there is no contact between people," customer Abel Ros said. "It's very cool!"
But some punters are not quite convinced.
"[In Seville] it is something that is very difficult for us to [understand] because we like people, we like a lot the proximity and we like to deal with the person behind the bar and who serves us the beer," says bar patron Francisco Javier Muños.
Victor Martin, the CEO of Macco Robotics, says robots can add value to human tasks, rather than replace human workers entirely.
"In the end, we are transforming, we are improving job quality because what we do is that professionals in the (culinary) industry dedicate themselves to adding value and offering other types of work within the catering business," he said.
Hospitality is one of the industries that has been most affected by Covid-19 and lockdowns and a reduction of tourism has had a big impact on the industry in Spain.
Beer sales in Spain's bars and restaurants fell 40% in the first semester of 2020, according to Spanish beer association Cerveceros de España.