KARACHI: A customer delightedly watches as Robia wheels over to him, a rectangular tray in hand with a piping hot pizza on it. But it isn’t the food that excites the customer. Rather, it’s the humanoid robot that calmly delivers his order to the table, marking an unusual sight on Karachi’s restaurant scene.
The Sicilian Restaurant is a fast-food chain located at Karachi’s Shaheed-e-Millat Road. The eatery follows a mafia-inspired theme and serves burgers, deep-dish pizzas, steaks, desserts, and other items.
But that isn’t the only thing that sets the restaurant apart. It uses two humanoid robots, Robia and Jojo, to serve meals to customers. Both robots, with their white spherical heads fitted with dark helmet visors, bring food over to customers.
These robot waiters with their sleeveless maroon tops, paired with long, black shawls are a novelty in Karachi. Robia and Jojo have become a hit on social media, with the restaurant drawing in children, social media influencers and families in huge numbers waiting to be served by the humanoids.
“In Karachi, many customers have come after watching the robot,” Ali Zaidi, the restaurant’s operations manager, told Arab News. “Families come and say they want the robot to serve them.”
Zaidi said the robots were developed by Usama Aziz, an electrical engineering graduate of the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), and were part of the restaurant’s effort to bring a distinctive concept to Karachi.
Aziz, the founder of Multan-based company Cobot that developed the robots, said the machines were developed and manufactured locally, including their programming, hardware, circuit boards and fiberglass bodies.
The robots are priced at Rs400,000 ($1500) each and have also been supplied to educational institutions and restaurants in different cities, according to the engineer.
And the effort has paid off.
“Families, children, vloggers, and bloggers are all coming and enjoying it,” Zaidi said.
But how do the robots work?
Human waiters at the restaurant operate these robots through a mobile app.
Muhammad Ali, a robot operator at the restaurant, said Robia and Jojo can also be operated using a remote, while the application allows staff to control their functions through a mobile phone.
The robots wheel over to customers and stand frozen in place with their food trays. It takes a human waiter to take the customers food from the tray and place it on their tables.
Ali said the robots can occasionally shut down when their batteries run out, although their systems and lights may remain active.
‘A NEW THING’
Muhammad Naeem, 40, an entrepreneur, had visited the restaurant at his children’s insistence.
“I had seen it online, its videos were circulating so the kids insisted that they wanted to see it too,” he explained.
“So I brought them here, and it was a lot of fun.”
Khadija, a six-year-old school student, said she enjoyed interacting with the robot waiter.
“I had a lot of fun here,” she said. “And then I played with the robot.”
Another customer, Muhammad Shahid, 36, who works in the private sector, said it was the first time he had been served food in a restaurant by robots.
And for him, the food wasn’t bad either.
“So I really liked it; it’s a new thing,” he said. “And the pizza is also unique. I haven’t seen such a pizza in Karachi.”
