A robot at an airport near you will soon be helping you with your flight status, guiding you to your designated boarding gate and offering details about weather conditions and your favourite movies, besides engaging your kids with video games.
A Tata-Singapore joint venture airline, Vistara, announced on Tuesday that it had created a robot called RADA, using Artificial Intelligence technology, that will be placed at its signature lounge at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport from July 5. It will answer your queries once you have scanned your boarding pass. It will greet customers and interact with them using basic hand movements and will move around in the lounge on predefined pathways.
It is capable of responding to three different sets of queries. The first is the safe set pertaining to a passenger’s flight and services available in the lounge. The “unsafe set” includes cognitive and intuitive questions such as ‘How are you?’ and ‘What are you doing?’ The last set includes requests for entertainment in the form of movies and video games.
“This is a trial phase during which the robot will be tested for its cognitive response. It will be developed further for as many as 17 use cases, including carrying wheelchairs for passengers, collecting luggage and assisting senior citizens,” Vistara’s Chief Information and Innovation Officer, Ravinder Pal Singh told The Hindu in a telephonic interview. RADA has a chassis consisting of wheels which can rotate 360 degrees, enabling it to run, walk and turn.
RADA is derived from ‘Radha,’ the name of the daughter of a Principal Architect in Vistara’s IT team who played an active role in its development.
