KOCHI: Ever fancied a robot serving food on your table at restaurants? The sc-fi dream is finally coming true with ‘Chefbot’. If things go as planned, you will soon see robots populating restaurants near you. Designed and developed by Lentin Joseph, founder and CEO of Qbotics Labs, a startup virtually incubated at Startup Village, Kochi, and operating from Kurumassery near Aluva, Chefbot, is an intelligent robot that functions on autonomous mobile navigation concept. Once the table number is fed, the said robot can serve food to customers on its own. How does it work? Simple. Customers place orders through the digital menu and the Chefbot will deliver the order to the table. The ground work for the project has begun a few years ago and it is poised to get implemented in a few years time. Lentin made his baby steps towards the Chefbot around three years ago and the prototype is ready. At the recently concluded YES summit 2014 held at Angamaly, it bagged critical appreciation and even the Chief Minister itself took a look at the functioning of the robot. “During my studies at Federal Institute of Science and Technology (FISAT), I have built a social robot which can communicate with human beings. After my BTech graduation in Electronics and Communication, I joined a robotics-based company, Energid Technology later known as ASIMOV Robotics. After three years there, I started my own company in January 2014,” Lentin says. Lentin, during his school days itself had kindled in himself a passion for robotic systems. But his social robot was an instant hit that shot him to fame. The main applications of the Chefbot, which can autonomously move from starting position to goal position, are at hotels, restaurants and malls for serving food, cleaning rooms, and can be used as research platform for students and engineers at IITs. “We are mainly focusing on deploying Chefbot at hotels and we named it as Chefbot. Low cost hardware is used now and the manufacturing cost comes less than 40,000 including computer system,” he says. Lentin says: the Qbotics wants to become a service provider and to develop hardware products in robotics, embedded system etc. Lentin’s areas of expertise include robotics, image processing, embedded system, wearable computing, green technology and artificial Intelligence. His research and study on green technology includes green inventions that are environmentally friendly and involve energy efficiency, recycling, safety and health concerns, renewable resources etc. Apart from Lentin, two other interns - Soorya Krishnan and Jeron K Joy - are burning the midnight oil to develop robotic applications at Qbotics Labs. www.qboticslabs.com 8907590702.