Always on the lookout for ways to enhance efficiency and reduce costs, airlines now have a new toy: a robot bartender.

The Skytender Trolley is not going to be a shiny and convivial robot clanking down the aisle and asking you, "What'll you have?" But it's only a step away from that.

Mounted onto the same kind of trolley flight attendants use today, the Skytender works like a soft drink dispenser at a fast-food joint. It can mix up 15 different drinks, and the system lets airlines choose more than 100 different beverages or flavors to offer passengers, including hot and cold drinks — even wine.

If you've noticed how many drink cans and bottles must be opened by flight attendants during a routine beverage service, you'll understand why Skytender will be so welcome. Instead of all that fumbling around with containers, a flight attendant's simple button push makes the chosen drink begin to flow.

Oliver Kloth, general manager of Skymax, one of the companies behind this tech, says the system was successful on a recent test flight. First tested on German airline WDL Aviation, the company plans to offer the service to other airlines.

"The system operated as expected ... passengers were extremely pleased with the beverage options and most importantly the quality and speed of service."

How would this Skytender automated drink system affect the cash-strapped airlines' bottom lines? According to our math, it looks like they could save a few bucks. "That depends of course on the configuration, aircraft type and flight profiles," Kloth told Mashable. He added, "In general, we calculate around $1,500 per month per trolley."

Multiply that by, say, 722 (the number of planes in the Delta Airlines fleet, the world's largest), and you're talking about savings of around $13 million per year for one of the major air carriers. Is Skytender on its way to a completely robotic system? It turns out that wouldn't work too well. Kloth said, "In our opinion it’s not the target to develop a robot system, because minimum crew is necessary anyway — passengers on isle seats would need to serve middle- and window-seat passengers in that case."

He has a point. Well, unless the robot had long arms that were graceful enough to not spill anything.

Here's the company's own promotional video:

Graphics courtesy Skymax