KARACHI (The Thursday Times) — “Welcome to Sicilian. My name is Robia,” says the waitress in an electronic voice, looking down at a family through blinking red LED eyes. Then she rolls on to the next booth. Robia and her colleague Jojo are robots, and they were built in Pakistan.
The two machines are the work of Syed Osama Aziz, an engineer who also founded The Sicilian, the neon-lit Karachi restaurant where they work. Through his robotics company, Cobot, he built them mostly from locally manufactured parts at a workshop in Multan, designing the circuit boards and writing the programs himself, with help from friends and some electronics brought in from abroad. “The equipment, the things needed to make robots, are not so easily available here, so we had to arrange them,” he said.
What they do: Robia and Jojo have round white heads with dark visors, a little like motorcycle helmets, and wear black shawls in the style of a dupatta. They introduce themselves, explain what is on the menu and wheel food to the table on a tray. They cannot yet put it down: diners either lift the dishes off themselves or wait for a human colleague to help.
Aziz wants them to do more. “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.”
The customers: robots already carry food in restaurant chains across China and East Asia, but in Pakistan they are still a rare sight, and families have been flocking to see them. Children reach out to touch them while their parents take photographs. “The best thing about it is that it introduces itself,” said one diner, Ahmer Zameer. Staff say the novelty is good for trade. “Our business has grown. People are coming from far away for this,” said Hellen, who works at the restaurant. “They have seen a robot for the first time here.”
