Pakistani engineer's homegrown robots roll out pizzas, greet diners at Karachi restaurant

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. Robia, a humanoid robot waitress serves customers at The Sicilian restaurant in Karachi.

( Asif HASSAN / AFP)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.

Aziz, whose workshop manufacturing the robots is located in Multan in Pakistan's central Punjab province, hopes to make his creations more sophisticated in the future. "Our plans are to add camera-based processing and image-processing features," he said.

"That means the robot will also recognise you by looking at you, and it will remember what you ordered last time, and accordingly it will be able to give you better suggestions." For now, the robots are proving a hit with families, who flock to the restaurant to watch the machines in action.

"The best thing about it is that it introduces itself," excited customer Ahmer Zameer told AFP, explaining the robot also "tells you what things you can order". Children reach out to touch the robots while their parents snap photographs and selfies.

Young customer Sonia Dilosker said she was impressed by the androids' appearance and preferred their approach to serving customers, "because it is a machine and without any emotions".