Arabic Speaking Robot Wanted for Mall Employee
A lab in the UAE has constructed the world’s first Arabic-speaking robot that might be mass produced to work in shopping malls.
Ibn Sina, named after the 11th century Islamic philosopher Avicenna, was developed by a team at UAE University.
"It is the world’s first Arabic-speaking conversational humanoid robot," Nikolaos Mavridis, assistant professor of computer science, said to AFP in an interview. "He enables us to do research and he is also quite an educational tool because the students love to do projects on him."
Mavridis, who worked with 12 other people, said the robot could work as a receptionist, sales associate or shopping assistant in a mall.
"There are a number of things he can do on his own: answer a couple of questions, connect to the Internet to get information and show you things on the screen regarding what you want to buy," he said. "We’re very close to being able to get him to work as a receptionist or a helper in a mall. If we work on it in a group of five people, we will be able to develop those skills in six months to make him ready for full operations."
"Already we have had him work for a full day in Al-Ain Mall," Mavridis added.
Ibn Sina is dressed to reproduce the original appearance of Avicenna. Using classical Arabic, Sina responds to questions using facial expressions.
The design of the robot itself was built by Hanson Robotics, while the software was constructed by Mavridis and his team. The team toiled for a year on creating the software that envelops the mind of the robot, like vision, speech, memory and motion.
Mavridis said that the lab has been asked by companies that want to use the robot for shopping malls or receptionists. "We have some basic interest. Things are in progress," he noted.
In addition to funding the robot, 200,000 dollars of the grant money was spent on creating technology behind the robot and future projects.
"Given all the growth that is happening right here at this moment, it’s important that apart from building the largest tower in the world and all of these beautiful buildings, to try to do something that has to do with scientific and intellectual achievements," Mavridis said.
"For that reason we chose Ibn Sina as the character from which our robot was inspired in order to bring back his values to our students … He brings together a lot of traditions, ancient and more recent traditions."
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