Ever imagined being welcomed by a robot at a Summit? Well, this happened at the New World Concepts Organizational Summit on futurism commerce, held at Movenpick Hotel in September. The robot was programmed to welcome the guests and collect their business cards. Towards the end of the conference, the robot thanked them for their visit.
The robot has been developed by Syed Usama Aziz, a young and energetic electrical engineering graduate from National University of Science and Technology (NUST), Islamabad. He did most of his projects on Robots while he was studying at university. Mr. Aziz takes his inspiration from the Chinese robots who serve in Chinese restaurants. The robots are also serving at restaurants since March. After a pizzeria in Multan, a restaurant in Hyderabad ‘The Burger House’ is also providing robotic waiter service to its customers.
The robot is a waitress, not a waiter. A scarf is wrapped around its neck to make it clear that it’s a female robot. The styling – red lips, purple apron and striped scarf gives the robot a feminine look. The mechanical design and body of the robot is manufactured from Fiber glass. All the materials used to develop the product are made in Pakistan. It weighs around 25 kilograms. A single robotic waitress costs around Rs. 316,000 (3000 US Dollars).
Despite having tremendous potential, robotics is complex and not much work is done here in this field. Hence, Mr.Aziz hopes to take it a step further. “I have established a company by the name of ‘NextGen Robotix’ to work on improving the robots and to provide a platform for aspiring roboticists to conceptualize, design, build, program and experiment with robots while staying in Pakistan”, Mr Aziz told Runway.
We wish this young roboticist at all the best!
