Customer service robot trundles into view

BOFFINS IN JAPAN have developed a humanoid customer service robot. The Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International said it designed the thing to ‘respond flexibly to the needs of customers’, reports Nikkei.net

The robot is being displayed at Universal Citywalk, in Osaka Japan. The first humanoid sales representative - dubbed Robo-Rep – should be available to retailers in June.

Robo-Rep receives data from 30 cameras and sensors installed on-site. The robot can monitor up to 20 people at one time and serve them. Or ignore them, if programmed for the UK market.

The firm claims the machine can pinpoint the locations of passers-by to within inches and identify 10 patterns of human activity, such as waiting, running or walking briskly, with 90 per cent accuracy, based on their gait and speed of movement.

In experiments on Tuesday, the robot asked people who stopped in front of an information board, "Are you lost?"

Robo-Rep is capable of more individualised services, say its makers. It will help people only when they appear to need directions and escort shoppers as they browse the full length of the sales counter.

Rumour has it a Robo-Rep is planned for our local Starbucks in the UK. It dumps a tea bag into a cup of hot water, then mumbles “milk and sugar’s over there mate,” but only when asked, and then points hopefully to a little pot marked “tips”. µ