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This company says they can make a humanoid robot that looks just like you

Ever had that fantasy that a robot could be built to look just like you and show up in your place at your job? Yeah, me neither. But if I did - now I know where I might be able to get one...
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Behold Android Robo-C. If the claims of this Russian AI company prove to be true, then you can order a robot to be made in your own image and likeness, and send him or her to go to work at your job in your place.

Ok, so maybe we’re exaggerating and jumping the gun a bit. But Russian manufacturer “Promobot” did announce, in a statement they published this week, the release of their Robo-C humanoid android robot that will serve as a robot companion and “integrate into the business environment.”

On their website, Promobot claims that they can make the Robo-C in the appearance of any person. Check this out, from their website, that says it is now accepting orders:

From promo-bot.ai

The company “believes that a robot like this is capable of removing the barrier in human-machine interaction and replacing a number of employees in crowded places – post offices, banks, and municipal institutions.”

Here are the uses they suggest:

Promobot scope of work

With artificial skin and over 600 facial expressions that copy human facial expressions Robo-C moves his eyes, eyebrows, lips and facial muscles. Promobot says Android Robo-C can  also “keep a conversation going and answer questions.”

Newsweek reports Oleg Kivokurtsev, Promobot co-founder, told Russian state news agency Tass that they are planning to create 10 of these robots per month “with any appearance, for home and professional use.”

“Everyone will now be able to order a robot with any appearance, for professional or personal use. Thus, we open a huge market in service, education and entertainment. Imagine a replica of Michael Jordan selling basketball uniforms and William Shakespeare reading his own texts in a museum,”  Aleksei Iuzhakov, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Promobot, said in a statement on the company’s website. “We can build a linguistic model based on popular phrases of a particular person – the robot will communicate and answer questions by analyzing frequent expressions of the ‘original’ and using a certain context of knowledge of this person.”

The manufacturer says that they currently have several private orders for the Robo-C and are negotiating with companies interested in purchasing a robot for customer service.

In the meantime, here’s where Promobot has made headlines a number of times in recent years:

  • In 2016 the company claimed one of its robots kept trying to escape the laboratory, several media outlets suggested the story was likely a publicity stunt.
  • In January, the company claimed one of its robots was “killed” by a Tesla Model S outside the CES technology convention CES, held in Las Vegas. Wired reports this was likely a publicity stunt.
  • In April, Russia’s Rossiya 24 News used an Android Robo-C as a news anchor.

According to RT.com, the robot-maker plans to deploy up to a thousand service robots to different European countries by 2024.

Like what you read? Check out more from my WorkingNation blog, The Looming Robot.

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Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.