There are questions

There are questions that—no matter how often we pose them—it never occurs to us to seek an answer from science: What is the right work-life balance? If you ask for the water, James will hand you the water; if you ask for the Coke, you get the Coke. No, James won't open it."The general exercise here is to make robots more social, or to make them social at all. Robots can do certain things very well—they can certainly move faster than I can—but their social intelligence is very limited," says de Ruiter, a cognitive scientist and professor of psycholinguistics at Germany's Bielefeld University. "We picked a bar setting because it's social but not too complicated."

The researchers filmed patrons placing orders in bars and nightclubs in Germany and Scotland to see how they interact with bartenders and used that data to program James. They found that the most common and successful method for both German and Scots drinkers isn't to wave or gesture or flash a wad of bills—it's simply to stand at the bar, directly facing the barkeep, and make eye contact. The researchers incorporated that data into James's programming.According to de Ruiter, James is even equipped with a "small-talk module" that allows him to banter a bit: Asked how old he is, for instance, James coyly replies that he doesn't like to talk about his age.

In videos available online, James comes across as competent while serving up bottles of water with a flourish. He's friendly and occasionally befuddled. Remember Coach from Cheers, Woody's equally dimwitted but older predecessor? James is a bit like that.An earlier version of James has an animatronic cat head and giant arms swathed in what looks like a Renaissance blouse, and he looks as if he should be tending bar in Jim Henson's Labyrinth.