In whisky news that’s both fascinating and slightly reminiscent of a Black Mirror episode, Bacardi announced the company is testing out robotic dogs to identify small but potentially expensive ethanol leaks in barrel-aging warehouses.
The National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS) is using its own robotic sensing kit on a Boston Dynamics Spot robot at the Bacardi-owned John Dewar & Sons maturation site near Glasgow. The experiment relies on a sensor held by a 3D-printed arm, which is used to detect ethanol vapor levels as the robot follows a defined path through the warehouse. The initiative is supported by the Scotch Whisky Research Institute (SWRI).
If the phrase “ethanol evaporation” loses some of the magic behind whisky maturation, think of it as the more commonly known phrase “angel’s share.” The larger the angel’s share, the less whisky you have left in the barrel, and larger leaks could ruin the barrel or be a safety hazard. Traditionally, inspection is a manual, time-consuming and inconsistent process.
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“There is great potential for innovation and technology to support the industry to become more efficient and data-driven,” says Angus Holmes, the whisky category director at Bacardi. “We’re proud to be playing our part to pioneer this new technology in the whisky industry and look forward to progressing from these trials to developing a live system that can be used at our sites in the future. The team loved having the robot dog around so much we gave him his own Bacardi name — ‘Royal Bark-la’ in homage to our Royal Brackla Single Malt.” (Aww?)
“Our aim here is to validate our own sensing kit and see whether robots can take on this type of inspection work,” adds Andrew Hamilton, head of the digital process manufacturing centre (DPMC), the organization that developed the robotic sensing kit. “The early results are promising, and it shows how manufacturing technologies being developed in Scotland are relevant across many sectors including the whisky industry.”
That last point is important. If autonomous robot inspection works, the process could be applied across multiple manufacturing and energy industries. Or, you know, the machines will turn and we’ll be ruled by robot dog overlords. We’ll see!
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