Wheeling its way between dining booths at a neon-lit restaurant in the Karachi megacity, a robot waitress drops off a fresh pizza to an awaiting family.
“Welcome to The Sicilian. My name is Robia,” the waitress says in an electronic voice, looking down at diners through blinking red LED eyes.
Robia and her colleague Jojo are the DIY creations of Pakistani engineer Syed Osama Aziz, who is bringing a sci-fi reboot to Karachi’s storied dining scene.
They have spherical white heads and dark visors, similar to a motorcycle helmet, and sport black shawls around their neck in the style of a dupatta worn by women in the region.
Syed Osama, who also established The Sicilian restaurant, developed the machines using mostly locally manufactured parts, designing their circuit boards and programming them in his own lab.
“The equipment, the things needed to make robots, are not so easily available here, so we had to arrange them,” he said.
The duo were developed through his robotics company, Cobot, with help from friends and some electronic components imported from abroad.
When the robots arrive at a table, the customers must either take the food off their serving tray themselves or wait for a human member of staff to assist them.
Syed Osama, whose workshop manufacturing the robots is located in Multan in Pakistan’s central Punjab province, hopes to make his creations more sophisticated in the future.
“Our plans are to add camera-based processing and image-processing features,” he said.
“That means the robot will also recognise you by looking at you, and it will remember what you ordered last time, and accordingly, it will be able to give you better suggestions.”
Restaurant staff say the novelty has brought a surge in customers – some travelling from across the sprawling port city to meet the robots.
“Our business has grown. People are coming from far away for this. They have seen a robot for the first time here,” staff member Hellen said.
“People are excited to see this.” — AFP
