Robot Employee at Moscow Institute of Technology

During the press conference preceding the presentation of the new employee, Alexey Yuzhakov, Founder and CEO of Promobot and Head of the Department of robotics at MIT, and Evgeny Pluzhnik, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of MIT and CEO of Moscow Business School, told about the technical features of Promobot and its working duties, as well as about how they see the prospects of robotics development.

Igor Eremeev, Co-Founder and CTO of Promobot, Director of the Center of Robotics at PNRPU, and Gulnara Bikkulova, Director of the Department of Innovative Markets and Board Member of the RVC, also made their presentations at the press conference. They told about the future development plans of Promobot and joint research of features of interaction between humans and robots, which will be implemented at the Moscow Institute of Technology.

"It is important to understand what robot will cause no hostility and rejection in humans," – said Evgeny Pluzhnik, First Deputy Vice-Chancellor of MIT and CEO of Moscow Business School. "For example, it is now known that anthropomorphic robots scare people much more than these that do not look like a human, and a comfortable distance for communication between human and robot is 60 cm. We are going to use these findings for the further development of robotics. I am sure that soon robotic assistants will be an integral part of every person's life. They will make life easier, both at home and in office. Our robot can understand phrases addressed to it and read emotions expressed by people," – added Alexey Yuzhakov. "It is able to recognize and remember about 1,000 faces and can use successfully over 100,000 speech modules." Alantim saves and systemises all the information received, and then sends it to owners in the form of reports. It should be noted that due to the direct contact with the person and ability to read emotions, the data received by Alantim are more reliable than these obtained from interviews and questionnaires.

Gulnara Bikkulova, Director of the Department of Innovative Markets and Board Member of RVC, described the near future as follows – "Raymond Kurzweil, the inventor, futurist, and CTO of Google, known for the fact that most of his technological predictions come true, believes that in the next five years robots will affect our lives so much, that in many countries, lawmakers will start speaking of delineation of the scope of authority between human and robot. While this issue is only beginning to develop in Russia, in 10 years they will enter into our lives so tightly that we'll get used to personal service robots in the same way as are now used to refrigerators and microwaves. In 20 to 30 years from now, a lot of what we see today in science fiction films – such as medical nanobots for example – will come true. By the time people will have a real chance to become virtually immortal, or at least significantly increase life expectancy."

Alantim will have a rich and interesting life in MIT. Gregory Bubnov, Vice-Chancellor and President of MIT, President of Moscow Business School, and Board Member of Fiztech Soyuz, announced signing of an agreement on cooperation between MIT and the Department of Robotics at Fiztech Lyceum SEBI, and Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). The parties are going to open full-time and distance learning programs in robotics and children's experimental laboratories at MIT.