In March, we told our readers about a restaurant in Multan utilizing robot for serving customers. There is an update to that. The restaurant has tested the robot, improved on it and now has launched the stable version. They have also added more robots in the team. The robots, named Rabia, Annie and Jennie, are part of the team of waiters at Pizza.com which is a pizza restaurant run by Osama Jafari, 24-year-old entrepreneur.
Osama Jafari’s restaurant garnered mass media attention owing to using robots for serving customers. The serving robots have been a talking point in the country due to which the inbound customers have increased manifold.
Jafari, alumni of the National University of Science and Technology in Islamabad where he studied engineering, built the three robots on his own using local materials. With the support of his parents, Jafari was able to raise $6,000 (600,000 rupees). He would then leverage on his engineering skills to build the three robots. He says that what inspired him was the videos of robot waiters serving clients in other countries such as China.
Although the restaurant is located in Multan, customers are coming from all of Pakistan to witness the robots dish out pizza to the customers. When asked, Jafari stated that he was already working on version two of the robots. In the second iteration of the robots, Jafari promises that the robots will be able to answer customers’ questions, be a bit more interactive and generally more human. Jafari’s family owns another restaurant in Hyderabad where he intends to send the robots soon.
Image Credit: Samma