Muhammed Malick, CEO of Kiran Smart, shares his story of partnership with Promobot, the experience of renting out the robots, and why people should consider a service robot now and not later.
Promobot has partners in 38 countries all around the world. Usually, clients implement Promobot robots for specific service functions, but some create entire businesses around them. One of the most popular forms of such a company is robot rental.
In the future, our service industry will mostly rely on robotics. We figured that robots would ensure we stay ahead of the service market. That doesn’t mean that robots will replace people entirely; many tasks will become progressively more complex and require humans to complete them. We concluded that a singular investment would be more long-term viable than relying on a constantly changing workforce.
Decision
We spent two years researching humanoid robots to understand their applications and implementations for different industries. At Kiran, we have more than a dozen robots from other manufacturers, coming in various shapes, sizes, and functions. We work with Promobot because they are advanced in features, hardware, and software applications. Their reliability and know-how are outstanding.
Tasks
We are happy to have robots functioning properly, albeit not everything met our expectations. The biggest priority for us is to present robots to a client at our location. It is crucial to demonstrate the functionality and what services can be provided by robots. I would say 80% of our expectations came true, and even then, all of our clients are amazed to see the talking robot that answers questions just as well as it dances.
Features
People are in love with Promobot. Clients are renting it for events and different occasions. They want to see interactive features, branding, and make the experience as entertaining as they can. We program our Promobot V.4 according to clients’ requests. Those are mostly similar: people want the robot to answer special questions that we upload into the linguistic database. Some customers want to see the robot with their branding. Some customers ask the robot to entertain guests: perform, dance and chat. When it comes to robots, people don’t have KPIs in mind; it is convenient with rentals. Some clients just need a robot to be on location, interact with people and not much else.
KUWAIT TECH EXPO 2020
This event was exciting. I remember everybody in Kuwait was talking about Promobot: the news spread like wildfire. People at the event loved us, and especially our robot.
Obstacles
We report technical issues to the Promobot team immediately and quickly resolve them with the Promobot support team. We are not technical experts, so most problems are fixed by the company’s technical support.
Any future improvements to our robots usually depend on clients’ requirements. Besides that, we are always in touch with the team at Promobot, discuss ideas, and see what’s viable and what isn’t. Thanks to the robot’s SDK, we have the freedom to develop our applications and software solutions. We plan to develop and implement applications for Promobot robots; there are numerous opportunities for us, and we are always talking with companies in different industries. Our plans are significant; we are sure to purchase more robots in the future.
Stories
Most rentals aren’t that eventful, at least from our experience. When our visitors talk to the robot, its facial expression might sometimes turn to anger. One time it happened when weird sounds were coming from the robot; that one made us laugh.
