Wheeling its way between dining booths at a neon-lit restaurant in Pakistan’s Karachi megacity, a robot waitress drops off a fresh pizza to an awaiting family.
While global buzz is growing around agile humanoids made in the United States, China and elsewhere, robotic staff are a rare sight in the South Asian country.
“Welcome to Sicilian. My name is Robia,” the waitress says in an electronic voice, looking down at diners through blinking red LED eyes.
Robia and her colleague Jojo are the DIY creations of Pakistani engineer Syed Osama Aziz, who is bringing a sci-fi reboot to Karachi’s storied dining scene.
They have spherical white heads and dark visors, similar to a motorcycle helmet, and sport black shawls around their neck in the style of a dupatta worn by women in the region.
Aziz, who also established The Sicilian restaurant, developed the machines using mostly locally manufactured parts, designing their circuit boards and programming them in his own lab.
“The equipment, the things needed to make robots, are not so easily available here, so we had to arrange them,” he told AFP.
The duo were developed through his robotics company, Cobot, with help from friends and some electronic components imported from abroad.
In China and other East Asian countries especially, robots are an increasingly common sight, shuttling food to customers in chain restaurants and taking on other jobs from cleaning to greeting hotel guests.
But they remain a novelty in Pakistan, where Aziz’s home-grown creations are attracting curious diners.
When they arrive at a table, the customers must either take the food off their serving tray themselves or wait for a human member of staff to assist them.
