Syed Usama Aziz, an electrical engineer, has a dream: to popularise the use of humanoid robots in Pakistan’s consumer market. And he seems to have set the ball rolling.Several restaurants in Karachi, Lahore and Multan are using robots made by Aziz’s start-up, Cobot, based out of Multan.“We manufacture robots locally using hardware, circuit boards and fibreglass bodies. We also handle the programming,” Aziz, a graduate from the National University of Sciences and Technology, told PTI on Tuesday.The robots run on batteries and are simple to operate. An application needs to be downloaded to run a specific task, he said.Aziz came to Karachi recently to see two of his humanoids — Rabia and Jojo — serve food and draw more customers at a popular restaurant, The Sicilian, after videos of them went viral.The robots, with white spherical heads fitted with visor helmets, move around the restaurant, serving trays of pizza, burgers and other foods, as fascinated customers watch them.The restaurant’s operations manager, Ali Zaidi, said customers, mostly families, have been coming with a request that they be served by Rabia and Jojo. “Customers, especially children, are clearly intrigued by robots serving them,” he said.Aziz said that people in Pakistan are now realising that robots can be used as helpers in consumer services.“We launched our first robot back in 2018 at a restaurant in Multan, but the idea didn’t catch on. There were issues which took us years to sort out with our robots,” he recalled.But things have changed with time. Aziz believes that Pakistan currently has vast untapped demand for humanoids, but acknowledges that it can be difficult to convince people to spend around PKR 420,000 on a robot.“We are trying to supply these robots to educational institutions and restaurants on a trial basis and at subsidised rates, because we believe they can be programmed to do simple tasks,” he said.Aziz said that with growing demand, his company is working to ensure that the humanoids become more responsive and intelligent. “The advent of AI has helped a lot and can help in programming these robots,” he said.“For now, they are programmed just to carry the trays to the tables as waiters put the food in front of customers. But we are working on programming them to take the food from the tray and serve it themselves,” he added.