A picture from Thoothukudi we published recently evinced considerable reader interest. In it, a robot was seen helping a customer as a shop assistant. There’s also Zafira, a sari-clad humanoid used to pick out tough-to-reach drapes in garment showrooms in Tiruchirappalli. Nila, another humanoid used at this year’s Assembly poll to greet voters at a model booth in Coimbatore, was originally meant as a shop assistant in the minimal-touch pandemic era. As Tamil Nadu emerges as a hub to train humanoid robots in manual work, policy makers should gently incentivise their deployment. Rather than gobbling up much-needed jobs at shops, they could be better designed for tasks deemed hazardous for humans—starting with efficient sewer cleaning.
