Robo Cafe, Vietnam’s first robot cafe, has opened on Lac Trung Street in Hanoi.
The two-storey cafe is designed as a spaceship, with customers on the second floor served by a homemade robot named Morta.
Mortar has a 3D plastic shell and a touchscreen to control its actions. The robot’s feet are equipped with a metal detector to recognise strips of aluminum on the floor, which guide it to customers’ tables.
The 130cm-high robot is able to speak basic sentences such as asking customers to take their order, saying thank you, and asking people to step aside for it.
Mortar can work for 15 hours straight after a full charging, which effectively replaces two human employees.
Nguyen Quoc Phi, Robo Cafe’s co-owner, says he will expand the robot teams in the near future.
He says a robot costs about VND200 million (US$8800) to make.
