Hyderabad, India | 12th January 2021: Vistan NextGen, a Hyderabad based start-up has forayed into developing India’s first indigenously manufactured Robots – “Flunkey”. As the new wave of automation kick started and with COVID accelerating the digital adoption and automation, Vistan has stepped into a new phase of designing, customising, manufacturing and supply of robots to boost social, service and industrial production.
Vistan NextGen, started by Rama Raju Singam, a UK returned entrepreneur cum roboticist and technology expert, is on a mission to create a working atmosphere wherein robots and humans can cowork and coexist under the same roof. The company, which is the brain child of Singam, is on a verge to introduce a series of robots in the next one year, custom designed not only for varied social, service and industrial work, but also for numerous consumer interface tasks. Amongst the first set of robot the company has introduced Flunkey as a service robot for business and consumer interface.
Flunkey Robots –
Fully autonomous service bots revolutionizing the service sector. Vistan NextGen invented Flunkey with an idea to reduce human intervention in tedious and hectic tasks, ultimately helping the service sector drive in a smarter and safest way possible. As the frontline workers in every business and in particular those working in hospital and clinics, come in direct contact with customers are being exposed to major risk, Flunkey takes the higher responsibility of not only dealing with customers in a seamlessly but also guiding them the best possible way in the given working environment. Flunkey becomes the need of the hour in the current COVID scenario, as the purpose arises to nullify human interaction and social distancing becomes a norm, especially in the service sector.
Variants of Flunkey Robots:
- Healthcare Industry
Sushruth Robot & Nightingale Robots – designed to primarily assist the patients stepping into the hospitals and clinics, SushruthRobot helps in booking appointments, collecting consultation fees, sanitising customer’s hands and disinfecting body. All of these tasks performed in a couple of minutes while the appointment receipt is printed on the other hand, with zero intervention of receptionist at the hospital lobby. NightingaleRobot comes in the avatar of AI-enabled interactive solution with highly integrated contactless technology to track early symptoms of COVID-19. The robot guides the patients to the respective areas in the hospital for consultation and also helps in performing some of the preliminary tasks such as testing body temperature, heartbeat, respiratory rate, blood oxygen level etc.
Healthcare Industry (COVID-19) Specials.
- Flunkey Autopure: The robot constantly sanitizing the living areas and helps in keeping the surroundings safe and clean. Using autonomous UV based disinfection facility where difficult for human’s to reach.
- Flunkey Covid-19 Steward: In order to mitigate the pathogen spread and protect healthcare workers and also to reduce the burden for patients, Flunkey Covid-19 Steward comes as a rescuer by undertaking the crucial tasks like supplying medicines and delivering food to the patients.
Hotel & Restaurant Industry
- Flunkey Bearer assists the customers end-to-end – from selecting the best dishes from the menu to displaying the special offers run by the restaurant, from closing the financial transaction to recording the customer feedback through an application seamlessly. Flunkey Steward is specially programmed to undertake the task of delivering pre-ordered food to the customers at the right table.
Banking Industry
- Flunkey Banking Assistant: The robot acts as a multi-task agent and helps the customers in filling the application forms from the digital menu, gives out information specific to exclusive offers, acts as a ekyc facilitator and also make special announcements from time to time during the banking hours.
Educational Robots for Teaching Industry
- Flunkey Vajra Acharya: The robot takes the learning experience to the next level with augmented reality, that helps students learn better as they see, visualize and experience things virtually.
Announcing the launch of Vistan NextGen, Rama Raju Singam, Founder – Vistan NextGen said, “We are very excited to be part of the new phase of automation in India with the introduction of Flunkey robots. With Make in India philosophy, we have decided to conceptualise, design and manufacture robots within India and in the process of building the entire ecosystem, we are training our vendors to design specialised circuit boards and also upskilling our workforce through learning platforms.”
“Our robots are equipped to perform more complex and sensitive jobs seamlessly and can also outperform humans in terms of time, accuracy and efforts,” he further added.
Combining the best of cognitive technologies to make the idea better, Vistan NextGen team builds the prototype robot and then it is tested and experimented with various use cases on a day-to-day basis. The research team, comprising of members from global offices, constantly engage in R&D operations to custom design products suited for various industries. Currently, Vistan NextGen has its production base in Hyderabad to cater to the domestic market and has strong plans to export the robots to other countries in the coming few months.
