First Robot Waiter Serves Students at Yakutsk School
The first robot waiter, BellaBot, has begun working in the cafeteria of School No. 40 on the initiative of Yakutsk Education Department head Maria Petrova. Although the robot is unusual, with an almost futuristic ambiance, children are delighted with it. This was reported on 23 January by the city«s education department in its Telegram channel.
The robot skillfully maneuvers between tables; it is not tall in height, and in appearance, it is a quite attractive «employee» with large expressive eye-screens. Cafeteria workers consider it a full-fledged assistant. It is fully autonomous and can work without constant supervision, able to say: «Be careful, it»s hot!« and carry several trays at once.
According to School No. 40 director Varvara Kychkina, this robot is meant to help student monitors deliver trays of food.
«Children are delighted, the process has become faster, more interesting, and resembles a fragment from the future. BellaBot is an intelligent machine equipped with navigation systems, obstacle sensors, and several shelf-trays. It is capable of independently building a route based on a pre-loaded map of the room, carefully avoiding people and tables,» the director said.
The city«s education department and the »Resource Support Center« view the robot as a test launch to assess the technology»s effectiveness under school infrastructure conditions and high daily load. If the experience is deemed successful, it is possible that such «smart assistants» will appear in other large schools in Yakutsk.
According to the website of the company «Your Robots», BellaBot costs almost a million rubles (approximately $10,000 at current rates). Muscovites can also rent them for just 8 thousand rubles per hour (about $80 per hour).
