Can't get served at a bar? This one's on us: this is what you need to do Meet JAMES, the robot bartender created by the Joint Action for Multimodal Embodied Social Systems Project. Courtesy JAMES Project The James Project - Joint Action for Multimodal Embodied Social Systems - is studying bartending. WANT to know why the attractive blonde sitting alongside you at the bar keeps getting served while you wait? Worse, why does the robot on your other side have a drink and you don't? Research was initiated into this pressing question after attempts to create a robotic bartender struck a hurdle: Just how do bartenders tell what people want amid all that noise anyway? What cues actually work amid the dim lights, loud music and the crush of bodies against the bar? A team from Germany's Bielfeld University have discovered a simple wave in a human bartender's general direction is not enough. So what did their robot learn that the less successful bar flies among us can benefit from? "It is crucial how customers position themselves at the bar counter," the publishers of the study in the journal Frontiers in Psychology say. "James" is a tablet computer mounted on a torso with one robotic arm. The "head" display show big eyes which can focus on customers and the animated mouth moves in synch with its speech. The machine was built to accept drink orders, reach for the drink with its four-fingered hand and arm, and serve it to the customer. Researchers in Bielefeld have observed how drinks are ordered in pubs and night clubs. Thanks to their findings, the bartending robot James knows when a customer would like place an order. Picture: fortiss GmbH Source: Supplied Its greatest challenge? Figuring out the social cues that its human clientele take for granted in everyday life. We are working on the robot's ability to recognise when a customer is bidding for its attention,' says De Ruiter. Thus, we have studied the process of ordering a drink in real life. In order to respond appropriately to its customers the robot must be able to recognise human social behaviour. In a noisy environment the robot cannot rely on language interpretation software. It needs to interpret the behaviour of its customers to determine those it needs to respond to, and those it should ignore. Researchers made a study of several pubs and clubs in Bielefeld and Herford in Germany and one in Edinburgh, in the UK. They categorised what signals were commonly used to attract a bartender's attention. Waving or gesturing has to work, right? Only one in 20 attempted this approach. What about looking at your wallet? Forget it. Only one in 15 tried this. Life imitating art: A robot bartender from the movie The Fifth Element. So what works the most? It seems most successful way to get a drink was to simply position one's self directly in front of the counter and then turn directly towards the bartender. Those who do not want to order actively avoid such a posture. "Subconsciously, they maintain a small distance to the bar and turn away from it," the study found. With the research results in, "James" had his programming updated and was returned to an active club environment. "With the update, James now only talks to people whose position and body posture clearly indicate that they wish to order a drink," says psychologist Dr. Sebastian Loth, one of the authors of the study. Now the rest of us know what prompts a bartender to perform, perhaps there will be a need for robots to keep up the pace. The robotics-human interaction study will continue until January 2014. Problem solved: Now robots and their bar-challenged human counterparts know how to get a beer.