Bengaluru will now have robots to usher in and serve its denizens Indian, Chinese, Thai food and a variety of mocktails, at the city’s first ‘Robot Restaurant’

Robot Restaurant — located in the upmarket high street, 100 ft road, Indiranagar — was brought to  Bengaluru after its successful launch in Chennai two years ago, followed by Coimbatore last year.

The robot-themed restaurant spanning 3,700 sq ft to accommodate 118 diners will be manned by a team of six female robots, including an Android-usher robot and five bearer robots along with 30 staff, including kitchen staff. The aisles of the restaurant are extra spacious to allow free movement of the robots and the front of the restaurant sports a video wall that offers a cockpit view of outer space.

While the cuisine served is the biggest draw at any restaurant followed by its ambience, Venkatesh Rajendaran, founder, Robot Restaurant, said that his  female robots will hog the limelight.

“The Android-usher robot will first greet diners, guide them to their table and in their subsequent visits will also greet them by their names, enabled with its built-in facial recognition technology. Each table will be equipped with a tablet from which diners can place their orders which the kitchen will receive directly,” Rajendaran, a former techie, told BusinessLine .

He added, “Once ready, the food will be served by the interactive robots which are programmed to greet diners, serve food on a tray, ask people to make way if they are obstructing its path and also wish diners on special occasions like their birthdays.”

Soups and  starters reach the diners on mini-service trains that come chugging up on mini tracks alongside the tables. Each of the blue and white female robots sports name tags and colourful scarves around their necks.

“We will let diners name the robots that we will pick in a lucky draw,” said Kailash Sundarajan, General Manager, Franchise Operations. “It took us six months of R&D and studying the market before we launched in Bengaluru, compared to our three other restaurants which were opened after three months of R&D,” he said.

Bengaluru’s  first high-tech dining experience was with the launch of Touche Diner that offered an interactive touch-screen table experience, conceptualised and developed by techie Jiby Mathews on the same 100 ft road Indiranagar in June 2011.

On the chances of success for Robot Restaurant in Bengaluru, Rajendaran and Sundarajan felt that although the city has a wide variety of culinary experiences, there are none that offer a robot theme, which they believe will be a big draw in the tech capital of the country.

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