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Cecilia’s not like any bartender you’ve seen before, and its not just because she’s seven feet tall.

She’s a robot.

And thanks to her artificial intelligence, cameras and language processing, Cecilia recommends and mixes drinks and even makes small talk.

In an interview with NoCamels published on Wednesday, Cecilia.ai CEO Elad Kobi and Director of Marketing Nir Cohen Paraira said the original robot was developed simply as a fun addition for events.

“We had really good feedback and we understood that we have something here. People really like it and they also asked ‘How can we get it to our office, because it’s very cool,’” Paraira said.

“So when we got that feedback, we understood that we have something much bigger than events and conferences on our hands.”

That how the Kfar Saba-based Cecilia.ai got started.

Cecilia can take orders by a touch screen menu or by voice, understands 40 languages, scans customers’ ID cards to make sure they’re old enough to order, accepts cashless payments, and even provide analytics on the orders.

She’s also a workhorse, capable of preparing 120 drinks in an hour.

Paraira also told NoCamels that the startup entered a partnership with the Bacardi Center of Excellence at Florida International University. The partnership will make Cecilia part of the curriculum “for enriching the students in the fields of hospitality innovation, alternate solutions, and combining mixology with technology.”

Students at the Miami campus, Paraira explained, will learn to develop cocktail menus, invent recipes and mixes, and implement them in Cecilia until it makes the perfect cocktail. In essence, the students will “teach” Cecilia’s AI to make new drinks.

Kobi stressed to NoCamels that Cecilia will supplement bartenders, not replace them.

“In the future, you’re going to see a lot of robotics and interactive machines that are going to interact with different customers in different places,” he said, from hotels, company offices, universities, VIP lounges and even cruise ships.

With 2018 drawing to a close, NoCamels is taking the opportunity to look at the stories that our readers loved most.

This Israeli Tech Helped In Search For Missing Boys Soccer Team in Thailand

A soccer team of 12 boys, ages 11 to 16, and their 25-year old coach went missing in June earlier this year in the northern region of Chiang Rai, Thailand. Shortly after their disappearance, Thai emergency services began search efforts and were soon joined by international experts from China, Australia, the UK, Laos, Myanmar, the US, and Israel. The boys were eventually located, trapped in a partially flooded cave.

One Israeli company deployed state-of-the-art tech to contribute to the search-and-rescue efforts. Maxtech Networks, a supplier of emergency communication equipment, sent emergency radios and other innovative technologies to aid the rescuers, including their patented Max-Mesh mobile professional radio, a device that enables mission-critical communication of professional mobile radios through virtual infrastructure.

“We as a company decided to contribute devices to save those kids,” Hanuni says, “It’s very simple. When there are children at risk, you don’t think twice coming from a place like Israel. It’s in our nature.” Hanuni says he was heartened to hear the group was located. “I am very excited by this amazing success combining technology and life-saving. It has worked.”

The boys and their coach were successfully extracted from the cave in an operation that began on July 7 and lasted three days.

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Israeli Startup Freezing Cancer In Its Tracks Now Tackling Kidney, Liver, Bone Tumors

In March, NoCamels drew attention to an Israeli biomedical company that is looking to revolutionize the treatment of cancer, a notoriously long and trying process that sometimes requires a combination of surgery and radiation or chemotherapy and can have devastating effects.

Since 2006, Caesarea-based IceCure Medical has advanced the concept of cryoablation, a process which uses extreme cold to freeze and destroy diseased tissue used by medical experts for years, to develop technology that would freeze cancer tumors. IceCure touts the procedures as non-invasive, safe, and a viable alternative to surgery. The system had specifically been developed to treat fibroadenomas, which are the most common type of benign breast tumors, typically seen in young women aged 15 to 30.

After administering local anesthesia, a doctor pumps liquid nitrogen at -274F (-170C) through a needle guided by ultrasound scanning to freeze the tumor without affecting surrounding tissue. The whole procedure takes about 15 minutes, can be done in a doctor’s office, and is virtually painless and minimally invasive. IceCure says it can use its system to treat tumors the size of golf balls.

Earlier this year, IceCure reported great success rates following clinical trials across the US. IceCure announced this summer that it will begin commercial treatments at Elisha Hospital, a private hospital in the northern Israeli city of Haifa.

Izraeli high-tech fejlesztések palesztin programozókkal

Izrael évek óta high-tech és start-up nagyhatalomként ismert a világban, de az elsőbbség megőrzésének egyik fontos eleme a megfelelő szakember-utánpótlás, ami a számos állami program ellenére akadozni látszik. Erre lehet megoldás egy évek óta működő, de mostanra nagyobb publicitást kapott módszer, a „Szomszédok kölcsönzése”. Az izraeli és palesztin vállalkozók által egyaránt win-win (kölcsönösen…