No matter which place you go, you can find Indian talents. Meet the 38-year-old Ranjit Srivastava who has developed an Indian version of ‘Sophia,’ which is a social humanoid robot developed by a Hong Kong-based company named “Rashmi” that is embedded with linguistic abilities. It is programmed in such a way that it can speak Hindi, Bhojpuri and Marathi along with English as well.
A master of business administration (MBA), Ranjit Srivastava, who has a wide range of knowledge and experience in the field of software development of 15 years, has developed the speaking robot in two years at a modest cost of Rs 50,000.
The developer stated it as world’s first Hindi speaking realistic humanoid robot and also India’s first lip-synching robot. Rashmi empathises with linguistic interpretation (LI), artificial intelligence (AI), visual data and facial recognition systems.
“Rashmi functions under a specially designed software and linguistic interpretation system developed by me. The LI programme analyses the feeling of the conversation while AI program analyses the conversation to extract the response from the device,” Srivastava was quoted as saying by Hindustan Times
Experts described the making of a robot as an incredible achievement. “I have not heard of any Hindi speaking robot in India. Though I have not seen the robot, it is incredible if it was developed,” said Dr Somnath Chattopadhyaya, associate professor of IIT-Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, who is also the faculty of innovation and incubation.
“It will take one month more to give it a complete shape of a human. Head and body have been developed and they are functioning properly. Process is on to add hands and legs to it,” Srivastava said.
Srivastava who is Proprietor of Lotus Communication, a Ranchi based software company, added that the robot has advanced features apart from the lip-syncing. It gives facial, eye, lips, and eyebrow expressions and it can rotate or move its neck as well.
“Humanoid robot is the need of future generation. It can work as bank receptionist, helper, friend of lonely people and others,” he claimed.
Ask the robot anything, it will reply in the same manner. If the robot is told you are ugly, it replies…go to hell. Say you are beautiful, it will reply thank you.
When asked about her favourite actor, it replied Shahrukh Khan. “It can talk for hours with a person and it recognizes the person after few meetings due to cameras fitted in its eyes,” Srivastava said.
When asked who inspired Srivastava to take up the speaking robot challenge, he replied, ‘Sophia’. “When I saw it and its functions, I thought it could be developed and decided to develop a Hindi speaking robot in July 2016,” said Srivastava
Ranjit Srivastava, with a wide range of knowledge, seems to have earned a great recognition for his brilliance. He claims to have developed an e-Nibandhan portal for registration department, which received the Scotch award, e-library for information and public relation department, tourism portal for tourism department, which clinched a national tourism award.
Srivastava has developed many software for various departments of the state government. Many of his software received national recognition.
