We plan to make Robots an Object of day-to-day life, says Gridbots Head Pulkit Gaur

There was a time when robots were only limited to sci-fi movies and to the robotic research sector. However, now a time has come when robots are being used in our daily life for household works. There are a number of companies developing robots for such use. These robots may not look humanoid but are capable of being your assistant in domestic work. Gridbots is an India-based company that is making such devices. We grabbed the opportunity to have a talk with Pulkit Gaur, Gridbots Head, who elaborated more on the robots that the company is developing.

Could you tell our readers about your educational and professional background?

I was passionate about robotics since my childhood and this passion continues till now. I am a graduate in Industrial engineering and passed out in 2004. I started my career as a software and hardware developer with a California-based MNC and soon was heading the Indian Operations as a Technical Manager.

Before leaving that job and starting my own venture I got offers from Google, Adobe, RF Micro devices and ARM Semiconductors. But I was determined to start on my own.

Please tell us a little about your company and its flagship products?

Gridbots is a relatively new startup and we are a very small team working on robotic and AI based products currently. We are planning to launch them in the consumer market soon.

In a short span of time we have been able to gain confidence from the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs to work on some of their classified projects. We worked with the National Institute of Design to work on the Advanced robotics lab.

Listed below are some of our flagship products:

Picporta (www.picporta.com): An online portal with a desktop software which lets you organize your pictures on the basis of the content of the pictures like faces, colors, backdrop etc. rather than filenames and tags. Picporta utilizes our image recognition engine which we are using for other products of the company as well. We provide picture organization, sharing and printing for user pictures too. Currently we are under private beta – but the type of response we have received from our beta users is amazing.

gBOT’s: (roboGRAD and autoGRID ) – These are the first of our personal home robots which are scheduled to be released soon in the consumer market segment. This particular robot is a programmable robot which can learn and remember whatever it is instructed to do. It has got pretty smart onboard electronics which lets it find its way to base station autonomously in case it needs charging or to identify its current location for making navigational decisions.

gridSURV: A robotic surveillance system which will replace the conventional surveillance systems. gridSURV provides the ability to search video content just like text files and can be accessed from anywhere in the world.

gridAIR: An interactive advertising solution meant for shopping malls and other big showrooms. This system utilizes machine vision and AI technology to understand the video content and then augments the video with virtual computer generated objects to suit users’ needs.

What interested you to enter this genre of consumer electronics industry?

The Consumer Electronics industry is an ever-evolving industry and there lies a lot of scope for innovation in this segment. Robots till date have been the object of bigger industries and labs. We now plan to make them an object of day-to-day life.

Please explain gBot robot in detail?

gBOT is a series of robots which we will be rolling out in the market. autoGRID and roboGRAD are the first robots from our personal robot series.

Gridbots is believed to be developing Robograd, a robot for personal help. Can you elaborate on that?

roboGRAD is the first of the series of our robots. This robot is primarily meant to perform some repetitive domestic tasks like vacuum cleaning, surveillance and basic material handling for personal help.

What are the technologies being used to develop robots?

We use machine vision, AI and some pretty advanced native approaches which lets us achieve the complex task of navigation of the robot and its smart behavior.

Please elucidate us with Gridsurv, an Intelligent Searchable Robotic Surveillance?

gridSURV is an intelligent searchable surveillance system that will replace traditional surveillance systems because it provides automatic content analysis and activity monitoring in the video streams along with providing the facility of searching the videos like document files which is based on content rather than its date or location. The cameras and other sensors are mounted on a robot which can be controlled via any communication media like – landline, mobile or internet.

The complete system is fully autonomous, so it keeps on navigating the area to be monitored by itself and informs the nearest police station in less than under 5-10 seconds

One more advantage which gridSURV provides is its ability to store up to 100 times more data in the same space that what the traditional DVR system will occupy.

What makes you hold an autoGrid and enGrid workshop?

When we started gridbots and started looking for robotic engineers, unfortunately we could not find engineers who suited our needs.

Thus, these workshops are our efforts to pump robotics in the young blood and prepare robotic engineers rather than software or electronic engineers alone.

Could you give details on pedGRID and microGRID workshops as well?

pedGRID (as per our knowledge) is the only of its kind of workshop on walking robots being conducted in India. This workshop provides an in depth coverage about designing and fabrication of walking robots. microGRID is a workshop on microcontrollers which aims to facilitate the knowledge of muC based systems to engineers who are not from electronics background.

Who are your target audiences?

Target audiences are generally the people who have a spark in them, irrespective of whether they are from the engineering or non engineering backgrounds.

How much does one robot cost?

It’s not fixed and varies from its functionality and level of sophistication.

What is the feedback so far? Any estimated sales figures till date? And in India in which regions is the concentration of sales the maximum?

We have tested some prototypes with our beta users and as expected the response was tremendous. We are still in talks with some VC’s and are expecting to go into production soon.

On a lighter side, do you think your robots could ever replace the uber-conventional “bais” or maids of the country?

Robots cannot replace a human in general – but when it comes to specific tasks – robots may produce better results than human.

How is it similar to the other house-hold peripherals such as the vacuum cleaner etc. which are found currently in the Indian market?

Current consumer electronic products are pretty advanced now-a-days, but what they lack is the autonomy in the decision and ability to interact with their surroundings. Our robots will fulfill that gap first and will be more efficient in similar operations.

Have there been any affiliations or partnerships between Gridbots and other foreign companies for the development of the robots?

Not yet.

Where do you see Gridbots five years down the line?

Doing something innovative!