Teforia Is A Tea Brewing Robot That Uses Algorithms To Pour The Perfect Cup

Lauren Keating, Tech Times 29 October 2015, 05:10 pm

Making a cup of tea seems simple enough. Just put a tea bag into a mug and pour in hot water, while adding ingredients like lemon, honey or sugar, depending on your preference.

However, just like those coffee lovers who have a precise way they like their cups of caffeine, there is actually a science behind the process of loose tea leaf brewing.

Luckily for tea drinkers, you will be able to just push a button on your smartphone to achieve tea nirvana.

Teforia is the smart tea-brewing robot for your home that uses machine-learning algorithms to master the perfect blend for your enjoyment. Combing technology with the ancient method to extract tea, the consumer inserts their own handful of loose tea leaves or Teforia pods that include an RFID tag with brew data. Simply add water into the machine and click the brewing button on the accompanying app for iOS or Android to start the process.

The company was founded by Allen Han, who previously worked at Microsoft to develop the original Surface and even the Xbox 360. A tea drinker himself, Han was inspired to create the company after being asked to check out a craft coffee shop in hopes they would serve the ideal cup of tea. Disappointed, he went on to tap into the market of beverage drinkers who may be under-served.

"I did a study around the business, and ritual, of tea. It's the second most drank beverage in the world after water," Han told Fast Company. Even in U.S., where consumers spent $30 billion [on] coffee, they spent $27 billion on tea. That was a shocking number for me, because as a tea drinker, I thought it was in a minority in the U.S."

Teforia will pour the perfect craft tea in just about four minutes. The machine seeps the leaves a few times at different temperatures to pull out the components for an exotic blend. It connects to a central server to pull up recipes, and allows users to share their own. Users can also provide feedback on the recipes so that the machine learns if you prefer the blend to be a bit sweeter.

Five-hundred units of the at-home tea-brewing smart robot is available for preorder starting today for $649. Teforia will then retail for $1,299 when it's released in the spring of 2016.