Shalini Saksena gets in touch with a child brigade that has delivered the hitech city of Bengaluru its first robotic waiter
It all began with the idea of drones delivering your pizza. To take technology a bit further, a team of four children — Arjun (13), Anish (12), Srivatsan (13) and Varsha (20) have now created a robot — BOB who was seen serving food to guests at a food court in Bengaluru during an ongoing food fest. Named after Bob, The Builder, a name given by the kids, the robot, for now, can only deliver and not take orders. But Sneha Priya, co-founder of SP Robotics Works, a start-up, who helped helm the project, tells you that work is on to upgrade BOB and soon you will see him take orders as well.
She tells you that while the kids named it after Bob, The Builder, they later modified it and came up with a more appropriate name for the acronym BOB — Butler ‘O’ Bistro. Though the food fest is over, BOB is still going to be seen, at least on weekends at VR Mall where customers who had to wait till their order was ready at the counter and then take it back to their tables, can now take a seat while BOB does the rest.
“Walking on a path guided by a strip placed on the floor, BOB begins its journey along the pre-determined route from the kitchen to the tables. Using wheels for traction, it follows a line embedded on the floor to move between locations. It also has ultrasonic sensors that gauge the distance between itself and passersby. Once it reaches the destination, the robot greets the guests with a smile and requests them to receive the food. After the food tray has been emptied, it greets them with a smile and goes back to the kitchen,” explains Sneha who started an e-learning platform which focuses on providing maker-centric education for ages 11-plus.
Through Artificial Intelligence, the online platform teaches technologies with hands-on experiments and personalises the learning experience by interacting with the learner and creating a community.
“We have different communities — Bengaluru, Chennai, etc. The Chennai community has already done many such implements like the Swachh Bot (for cleaning the beaches), Agri Bot (for weeding). When the Bengaluru community started, we wanted to give them the opportunity,” Sneha says.
The idea that came from the children, was then taken forward by the start-up and it took them two-and-a-half-months to build. The material was sponsored by SP Robotics. Though the prototype cost them around Rs 1 lakh, if someone were to actually buy it and use BOB at his or her restaurant, the cost would be a couple of thousands. The good news is that the installation for BOB takes just a few minutes. Even less is the delivery of food from the kitchen to the table. “Maximum time would not be more than a-minute-and-a-half,” Sneha tells you.
Anish Adamane, one of the masterminds behind BOB, tells you that to begin with, the robot was a lot more complicated. But they had to tone done the look since it was not feasible to get the look that he had wanted. But he tells you that more changes are in store and the look too may come in for a change.
“The idea was to create something that had not been attempted before — a robotic waiter had not been made,” the Class VII student of Sri Vani Education Centre, points out.
He also tells you that their four-member team had the work cut-out for them and each had been given a certain aspect to look after. His was design, mechanical and electronics. The others brought in programming (Arjun); Electronics (Srivatsan) and Electronics (Varsha).
“The next stage is to check for any technical glitches that BOB may have. And then make other peripheral changes,” says Anish, who wants to be a businessman and mass producer of robots for the Indian market.