Restaurants Teremok to pioneer humanoid robot-cashier on Thu

By Yekaterina Yezhova

MOSCOW, Sep 5 (PRIME) -- Russian fast-food restaurant chain Teremok will introduce the world’s first humanoid robot-cashier, called Marusya and designed by local Alfa Robotics, on Thursday to two malls in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Teremok’s founder and CEO Mikhail Goncharov told reporters on Wednesday.

“Marusya is the world’s first robot-cashier that can accept payments without preinstallation of additional applications and can communicate with customers, entertaining them and offering different dishes and beverages,” Goncharov said.

“Its ‘employment’ has taken us more than six months, and now we’ll thoroughly analyze results of its work within our pilot project. If it goes as we plan, we’ll consider installing such robots in many restaurants in the mid-term.”

Goncharov said the robot cost millions of rubles.

“In the process of work on the system, I understood that there are really many heads and teams servicing the robot. The launch needed cooperation of 10–15 employees of our company. If we add this spending, the amount will be serious. However, we see future in it and we wanted to be the first,” he said.

Alfa Robotics General Director Vladimir Venerov said the lifespan of such a robot amounts to seven years. “We’ll continue working on it,” he said.

Goncharov said that in terms of salaries, Marusya will replace a cashier within a year. The chain employs over 3,300 people and services up to 30 million clients per year.

Marusya will welcome visitors at the entrance of malls, offer menu, take orders for exact time slots, accept payments by cards and cashless systems on smartphones, print receipts, and maintain dialogue. Orders can be collected at Teremok restaurants.

Teremok runs over 300 outlets in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Krasnodar and its turnover was at 8.3 billion rubles in 2017.

(68.2737 rubles – U.S. $1)

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