Taking a cue from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Make in India” campaign, some Indian information technology (IT) companies have started conceptualising and making humanoid robots that could soon replace the role of humans in several sectors of the Indian market.
Robo Mitra is one such example and is considered as one of the most intelligent humanoid robots that has been made by Indians in India. It has been completely conceptualised and developed by a Bengaluru based start-up firm, Invento Robotics.
The humanoid Robo Mitra is an interactive robot that looks and acts like a human being, with the capability of face, speech and environment recognition and registration, with the ability to remember and interact with customers.
Robo Mitra features a facial recognition technology, allowing it to recognise and greet customers instantly. Operating without any help, Robo Mitra can recognise speech in multiple languages, engage customers with its friendly demeanour and smart conversations; it also has the ability to navigate on its own.
Kaundinya Panyam, vice president, Invento Robotics, said, “The idea of developing this product was to address the ‘disconnect’ that people mostly face currently at malls, airports, theatres as well as in banks. So it starts as a concierge of the information that you require, but with artificial intelligence, it tries to remember customer patterns so that it can interact with you and help you with your needs more accurately and specifically.”
“We have tried to make it interactive and personified with user interaction and recognition features. Mitra can walk, talk and greet like any other human being. It can also recognise you the next time you meet him. It also has the ability to navigate terrains and remember its surroundings and environment, like entry and exit points, direction of stalls, shop counters, etc. It acts exactly like a human being,” Panyam added.
Robo Mitra was first showcased at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad in November last year where he greeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Ivanka Trump at the venue. Apart from this, Robo Mitra is being used for customer interfaces at the Canara Bank headquarters. According to Panyam, Robo Mitra will soon be installed in all the branches of a private bank in India. Robo Mitra will also make his presence felt at a mall in Delhi sometime next week.
Apart from this, another robot has been developed by an Indian based out of Gurgaon. Named Robot Arya, it is a robotic chai maker that understands and responds to human voices and makes tea according to the choices and recipes provided by the customer.
The robot acts either through voice commands or through an application which is read by the robot over the internet.
Akash Takyar, CEO at HiArya, told The Sunday Guardian, “This robot understands your commands and curates your own recipe with hundreds of flavours. Anybody can go to our website and create a recipe for tea as per one’s own taste. One can also modify one’s recipe just by tapping on to the application from their phone. It was conceptualised to make life easier, as tea is a drink that most people enjoy.” The machine took two years to be ready, with around 12 engineers from Delhi NCR putting their heads together for around 20 months to build the prototype.
HiArya has been able to manufacture around 20 units which are currently being leased out to different retail stores and corporate houses.