A group of students from the Da Nang-based Duy Tan University has successfully made a robot waitress named Duta for serving customers at restaurants.

The four-wheeled robot waitress Duta created by a group of students from the Duy Tan University

Nguyen Anh Quoc Huy, leader of the University’s robot creators, said that he and his teammates came up with the idea of the robot waitress project after seeing a robot displaying the university’s important information including events and school announcements.

Huy added his team’s idea has always received enthusiastic support from their university lecturers, especially lecturer Pham Quyen Anh - an expert in electrical and electronic aspects and lecturer Ha Dac Binh, the Dean of the university’s Electrical and Electronics Engineering Faculty.

Thanks to the useful advice and active support of the lecturers, robot creators have gained more professional knowledge about robot manufacturing. The lecturers have also helped robot creators contact with restaurants and hotels in the city to conduct survey about the work of restaurant waiters/waitresses. From there, the students can create a robot which can do a good job of a restaurant waiter/ waitress.

According to Huy, the four-wheeled robot waitress Duta can replace or simplify the work of waiters in restaurants. On entering a restaurant, Duta is there to greet you, and she then guides you to your table and delivers food and drink to you. She can create an interactive shopping experience, and provide consultative and informative explanations.

Duta can communicate in different languages and interact with people in an intelligent manner.

The robot’s head is accompanied by an LCD display screen to produce different facial expressions such as happy, sad, and anger. It provides gestural feedback of agreement and disagreement to customers by nodding or shaking its head.

Most notable, customers can select products via touch screen on the robot.

Huy highlighted the significance of replacing waiters/ waitresses with robot in helping restaurant owners reduce the labour costs. In addition, robot can serve diverse sources of guests from different countries because she can speak many different languages.

The creation by Duy Tan University’s students won the 3^rd prize for the robot product in the municipal-level Startup Challenge Contest 2019. It has been ranked 4^th among the 10 most outstanding startup projects of the Duy Tan University’s ongoing startup competition.

By NHAT HA - Translated by MAI DUNG