MULTAN – A popular fast food restaurant in Multan has become Pakistan’s first eatery to replace human waiters with robots.
NUST alumnus tries to improve efficiency at his father’s restaurant
What makes the robot even more interesting is the fact that it was fully designed and built in Pakistan from scratch, rather than being imported from another country. It was the brainchild of Syed Usama Aziz, an electrical engineer who graduated from the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) in 2015. With a keen interest in robotics, he wanted to go abroad to study further.
Rabia, Annie and Jennie greet customers and bring them their pies at Pizza.com, where owner Osama Jafari—who built the prototypes himself—says the response has been a surge of new business.
Jafari said he was inspired by videos of robot waiters in China. The 24-year-old, who studied engineering at Islamabad’s National University of Science and Technology, said he began working on a prototype with the support of his parents.
He is already working on the next generation, which he says will be more interactive, able to respond to customer’s questions, and hopes to spread his robot staff to his family’s other restaurant in the southern Pakistani city of Hyderabad.
