The Banking system in India in facing enormous queues in the banks. Every branch has a different setup and at times customers find it difficult to find the right desk to go and get their work done. The staff capacity is limited and the customers walking down are relatively large and it becomes difficult to service them instantly. To come over this problem and get the work of customers as fast as possible, the bank has introduced IRA – Intelligent Robotic Assistant. IRA has been developed for the purpose of serving customers needs. The robot is Developed using Robotics and Artificial Intelligence technologies.
IRA is a humanoid and interactive. There’s a touch panel in front through which customers can choose what operation they wish to perform at the bank. The robot would be placed near the welcome desk of the Kamala Mills compound HDFC bank and it will greet the customers guide them to the relevant counter in the branch such as Cash Deposit, Foreign Exchange, Loans, among others in the first phase.
The beauty about the robot is that it can escalate you to the said counter if you choose the option of taking me there after selecting an operation. The Robot has the layout of the branch feed in its memory and it performs the operations according to the command given by the user. IRA is still in alpha stage and it can perform only 10 operations at the moment. The bank would take feedback about the robot’s performance and bring about changes in it. At the moment IRA is only present at the Kamla Mills compound, Mumbai. The robot is built with the latest technology because of which possibilities are endless with the IRA’s functionality. Robot being in the alpha stage isn’t connected with the bank’s server so it cannot perform operations pertaining account.
In the future HDFC plans to upgrade the robot by introducing features such as Voice and Face recognition for customer identification, Voice-guided navigation, Balance enquiry, and Cheque deposit among others. IRA is truely state of the Art robot and it is designed really well. The bank has put in the right use of Artificial intelligence and Robotics to simplify things and demonstrate, how technology can be used in solving problems. After getting the feedback and updating IRA, it will be rolled out to the branches all over India. IRA won’t be available at all the branches as it requires sufficient space to walk around and take customers to the designated counters.
