Waiter Robot

Robots waiting tables are nothing new. Part of the reason they haven’t taken off, though, is because they’re clumsy and more than a little intimidating. But that’s changing fast, and the best evidence might reside in the remote, mountain-strewn nation of Nepal.At Naulo restaurant in downtown Kathmandu, Ginger and her two robot colleagues “converse” with customers and even tell jokes in English when prompted. Their hand-painted, rounded shapes and large, blinking, almost sympathetic eyes help assuage my unease as they take my order of chicken fingers and fries.

Ginger is the brainchild of Rabin Giri, 26, and his colleagues at Paaila Technology, an award-winning robotics and artificial intelligence startup formed by a group of college friends and engineers in 2016. The robots are more advanced than other iterations in the region: They communicate directly with the kitchen staff while using swarm intelligence and speech recognition to serve diners. When idle, they dock themselves against a nearby wall, allowing patrons to eat undisturbed. The debate around workplace robots is hugely divisive. Depending on where you stand, the speed at which AI is advancing is either exciting and valuable or utterly terrifying. Anyone who has seen conversations with Sophia, a Hong Kong–built social humanoid who’s left some of the world’s top interviewers speechless, will be both intrigued and worried by the prospect that the gap between man and machine is constantly shrinking.

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https://www.ozy.com/rising-stars/how-this-robotics-wizard-is-shaping-the-restaurants-of-tomorrow/91462