Friends reunited: Russian bot recognises PM Medvedev after almost four-year-long separation

They haven’t seen each other since 2015, but a clever robot swiftly recognized Dmitry Medvedev as the PM stopped at technology park during his visit to the Siberian city of Perm.

“Hello, Dmitry Anatolyevich,” the robot said as it welcomed the prime minister at the entrance to Morion Digital technology park on Tuesday. “We last saw each other 3 years 10 months 6 days 7 hours 15 minutes and 40 seconds ago.”

Promobot company’s CEO, Aleksey Yuzhakov, then specified to Medvedev that the meeting took place at the opening of the technology park, which the head of the government used to attend. The robot understood that he was taking to someone he already knew thanks to its face recognition system, he added.

The machine, meanwhile, continued boasting, telling the high-ranking guest that he “got smarter [during this time] and can now work not only as a promoter, but also a consultant, administrator, guide and even a police officer.”

A Promobot is currently employed as a robocop in Kazakhstan, Yuzhakov said. “Hope, he doesn’t have a gun,” Medvedev laughed, while the CEO explained the machine is only used to host a database of criminals and carry out facial recognition tasks.

The PM then witnessed a whole concert, prepared by the Promobots especially for him. One of the machines was on the drums, while the other rocked the keyboard. The robots learnt to play music thanks to the software, which was programmed by the students of the Perm Polytechnic University. Another machine danced to a folk tune to entertain the prime minister.

© Sputnik / Alexander Astafyev

Medvedev was also shown the various stages of the Promobot production as well as the concept of the company’s brand new robot, which will be officially unveiled in mid-April.
Promobot is the largest manufacturer of autonomous service robots in Russia and Eastern Europe.

Since 2013, the company released 450 such machines, which were sold to 33 countries, including the US, Australia and Chile. The price of a Promobot in base configuration stands at 1.2 million rubles ($18,300), with the developers saying the machine needs from two to three years to pay for itself.

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