Ginger and Ferry, the waiters at Naulo restaurant in Kathmandu, use swarm intelligence, object recognition, speech recognition and auto-dock capability to serve customers.
Move over Alexa, Ginger can do everything you can do while serving a meal.
Naulo, a new restaurant in Kathmandu, Nepal, uses only locally developed robots to wait tables.
Diners can order their meal using touchscreens, and their robot waiters Ginger and Ferry will bring food and drinks to the table.
The robots, created by a local tech company Paaila Technology, use swarm intelligence, object recognition, speech recognition and auto-dock capability to go about running the restaurant. They also answer questions, tell jokes and banter in both Nepali and English.
Naulo, meaning “new” in Nepali, opened four months ago and is a popular restaurant among families and kids that like attempting to confuse the servers.
Paaila Technology director Aayush Kasajoo said they were interested in developing the technology as they saw more opportunities for artificial intelligence robots in the international service industry.
In Tokyo, Japan, a new pop-up cafe serves its diners using robot waiters controlled by people with disabilities like ALS. The 4-foot tall robots will transmit video and audio over the internet to the homes of 10 people with physical disabilities, who will control them remotely for ¥1,000 an hour (approximately $8.75).
The developers hope the restaurant will help those with physical disabilities to enter the workforce and aim to open permanent locations by 2020 – just in time for the Tokyo Summer Olympics.
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