UBTECH CAFÉ gave a demonstration, that Cruzr as the intelligent store manager could provide a series of services, including automatic welcome, product introduction and recommendation, order, payment, etc. That is definitely not a good user experience and needs much further development, which might cost a decade.
UBTECH, an AI and humanoid robotic company headquartered in Shenzhen China, recently introduced a new application scenario of the company's service robot product Cruzr - UBTECH CAFÉ, and gave a demonstration during the WISE Conference held by 36kr on Nov 28.
UBTECH CAFÉ firstly cooperated with The Alley (a drink shop). After inputting product information of The Alley, Cruzr as the intelligent store manager could provide a series of services, including automatic welcome, product introduction and recommendation, order, payment, etc. Cruzr's face recognition capabilities enable it to recognize the arrival of customers, then to say hello and interact with them. Cruzr provices multi-mode interaction experience including picture and text, voice, and motion, etc., to better meet consumers' needs, customers can place orders by directly speaking to Cruzr, or clicking on the Cruzr screen, and then pay the bill by scanning the QR code with a smartphone.
UBTECH CAFÉ aims to build a food and beverage ecosystem with services provided by Cruzr, and want to provide consumers with a variety of food and beverage choices as well as the intelligent services.
However, the author assumes all the service robots like Cruzr, will be turned out a semi-finished solution for providing service to human beings, and all the robots will be rubbish in the next 2-3 years.
"AI is currently very, very stupid," said Andrew Moore, a Google vice president, on a Google Cloud event, according to a news from cnet.com, "It is really good at doing certain things which our brains can't handle, but it's not something we could press to do general-purpose reasoning involving things like analogies or creative thinking or jumping outside the box."
Cruzr, for now, will cost much more patience of consumers to communicate with it word by word, sentence by sentence, it will be much more convenient to place the order by smartphone apps or Wechat Mini Programs. Waiters and waitresses could not be replaced by the robot so far, besides the communication efficiency, human beings provide affective interaction, which robot cannot.
In an official introduction video of UBTECH CAFÉ, UBTECH's staff had to bend down, get close, and talk to the slow Cruzr sentence by sentence, in order to place an order. That is definitely not a good user experience and needs much further development, which might cost a decade.
Founded in 2012, UBTECH is an AI and humanoid robotic company in China. In 2016, UBTECH Robotics has surpassed 1 billion valuation and became a unicorn startup company. Although the service robot will be a long-term business, UBTECH has some other products focuses on education, which part of business might have much better potential.
- Author: ZHANG Fan; Photo from article written by YU Xinting; Write to ZHANG Fan at ZhangFan@EqualOcean.com