It took Usama Aziz two years to build a white robot that dazzled YouTube viewers last month when with human-like fingers it poured a drink for his creator without spilling a drop.
Aziz, 28, an electrical engineering graduate of the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) in Islamabad built the white shiny humanoid at his bedroom-turned- laboratory in Multan, where he has been developing his passion for robotics for the past six years.
“Humanoid robots are the most difficult robots to make because human structure is complex, and very difficult to replicate,” he told Arab News. “There are individual finger control elements, which means I can individually control its fingers as well as the elbow, wrist, shoulders and all the joints separately. It is very complex.”
The white robot, which Aziz says is still in the development stage, has made the rounds on social media, but it is not his first creation.
In 2016, he made a food-serving droid, which was even put to work at a Multan restaurant in 2017. But that one was much simpler and could not move its arms.
For the drink-serving robot Aziz opted to go with a 3-D printer, also because of how he believes it could influence robot design, particularly in Pakistan, where research and development have been limited.