The multi-cuisine, concept restaurant is making waves in Hyderabad. It’s almost like something straight out of sci-fi comic, story or any of the latest movies. Remember Arnold Schwartzneger ‘Terminator’? Or a Rajnikanth blockbuster film ‘Chitti’?
Chitti has become an overnight sensation and is making waves in Telangana’s capital city Hyderabad after taking on its new assignment as a ‘hospitality specialist’ in a state-of-the-art restaurant in Dilsukhnagar – ‘Chitti in Town’.
Dressed in gorgeous sarees, Chitti and four other ‘bionic beauties’ look stunning and cool, as they move from table to table with measured grace and unhurried poise.
All the restaurant guests from bustling pre-teen kids to somber senior citizens, and all the others in between, gasp and gape at them in unabashed wonder and awe.
But nothing distracts Chitti and the others as they move around mesmerising everyone, and serving guests at their tables, according to respective orders.
Soon the sixth member of their team, Maira, makes an appearance. It is fully interactive and can carry on a regular conversation. Maira is an acronym for Multi-sensing Intelligent Robotic Assistant. It is programmed to see, read, hear and talk and carry out a wide range of functions.
All the robots are integrated with Alexa and Google Home and their ‘AI DNA’, makes them supercool.
This robot’s special programming gives it the ability to switch voices when talking to guests. So if it’s a male guest it speaks in a male voice. When talking to children or ladies, Maira modulates its voice accordingly.
Maira is an acronym for Multi-sensing Intelligent Robotic Assistant. It is programmed to see, read, hear and talk and carry out a wide range of functions. All the robots are integrated with Alexa and Google Home and their ‘AI DNA’, makes them supercool.
These ‘android wonders’, if one may loosely call them that, or simply super-intelligent robots, have been brought to life with the wizardry of high-technology, computer engineering, and artificial intelligence.
For the guests everything seems almost unbelievable a little too fantastic; it’s almost like something straight out of sci-fi comics, stories or any of the latest movies from Bollywood or Hollywood, featuring robots/androids, some with almost human-like qualities and appearance.
Remember Arnold Schwartzneger in ‘Terminator’? Or a Rajnikanth blockbuster film in Tamil and Hindi, themed on robots? And, wonder of wonder, the title of this movie was ‘Chitti’ as well.
All this has been made possible with the finest of home-grown talent and skills right here in Hyderabad. The robots have been made by Hitec-City based Vistan NextGen, at their manufacturing unit in Kukatpally.
In technological parlance, five are Autonomous Robots, which in layman’s lingo simply implies that they have a limited range of functional capabilities, including limited chatlines, like shaking hands and saying “What is your name?” or “How are you?” and a couple of other such simple sentences.
Vistan NextGen founder Rama Raju Singam says it has taken more than 18 months to roll out these models from his production unit. Since these robots are assembled by hands, the process is time-consuming. Another issue is of skill-gap.
According to Singam, more than 80 per cent of each robot is made of “indigenous components produced in our factory. Only some intelligent chips are imported from abroad”.
He is confident that production schedules would be far better and faster now that they have upgraded to fully automated machines. They will also be using a plastic polymer ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) to build the bodies of the robots through thermoforming. It is a process where under high temperatures the polymer is made pliable for moulding.
Singam says the company is trying its best to meet the demands of customers across India, as well as from UK, Canada and India.
‘Chitti in Town’, a multi-cuisine concept restaurant, is jointly owned by Ganesh Reddy, Teja Kiran Srikanth, and Padmaja Goud.
They say their concept restaurant has been a resounding success from the very first day. “The spectacular science fiction appeal is definitely a huge plus factor”.
However, Covid restrictions have been a contributing factor as well since the robots have reduced human interaction to a very minimum level, they add.
This is the second such robot restaurant in the city. The other one is ‘Robo Kitchen’ in the upmarket, Jubilee Hills area. Inegrated robot restaurants are also coming up in Warangal and Tirupati districts.
Chennai was the first to open a robot restaurant in 2017 followed by Bengaluru (2019).
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