Robot at your service: Bengaluru eatery gives a taste of alternate reality

Keeping with the upbeat restaurant culture in Bengaluru, the city has got its first robot-themed restaurant to give diners a taste of alternate reality 

The concept

For a hi-tech dining experience, the robot-themed restaurant located in the busy 100 Feet Road in Indiranagar welcomes guests with an interactive robot receptionist who assigns tables to diners. Robots also don the hat of waiters and serve the guests. Tokyo already has a Robot Restaurant since 2017, one of the top tourist attractions of the city.

An automated world 

• A Bengaluru startup has launched a cooking robot called Mechanical Chef, which is capable of preparing around 100 Indian dishes 
• Mitra, a 5 -feet tall humanoid, meets, greets and answers queries of customers at Canara Bank’s Candi branch. ICICI Bank has deployed robots to sort currency notes   
• Bandicoot, a spider-shaped robot cleans sewers and manholes in Kerala, and couple of other states   
• GraspMan, a robot developed by researchers  at IIT-Madras, can climb pipes and work in rescue operations

Global robot race 

• 384,000 robots were shipped globally in 2018, according to the 2019 World Robotics Report 
• Leading in robotics, about 90 per cent of Singapore’s food and beverages sectors is run by robots 
• Japan has about 300 robots for every 10,000 workers. It is currently working on ‘caring’ robots to look after the elderly. A temple in Kyoto is also utilising a robot priest to revive faith 
• In the US, robots are being used to sort trash for recycling