Meet Ginger: Nepal’s first robot waiter is ready to take your order
- What Nepal lacks in tech infrastructure the engineers made up for in ingenuity – Ginger’s sleek-looking plastic body was painted in a neighbourhood car workshop
“Please enjoy your meal,” says Nepal’s first robot waiter, Ginger, as she delivers a plate of steaming dumplings to a table of hungry customers.
The poor Himalayan nation is better known for its soaring mountain peaks than technological prowess, but a group of self-taught young innovators are seeking to change that.
Local start-up Paaila Technology built Ginger, a 1.5 metre-tall robot, from scratch and programmed her to understand both English and Nepali.
The bilingual humanoid robot – named Ginger after a common ingredient in Nepali cuisine – can even crack jokes like Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa.
Three ‘Gingers’ work at Naulo restaurant in the dusty capital Kathmandu, where potholed roads and crumbling buildings still bear the scars of a powerful earthquake that hit more than three years ago.