Genrobotics: Empowering People and Improving Lives with Robots

On today’s program, we’ll learn about Genrobotics Medical and Mobility (Genrobotics), a robotics company based in Kerala, India. Established in 2017, the company’s mission is to develop technological solutions to improve the lives of people, especially those working under dangerous and/or undesirable conditions. Using a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, the company develops robots to improve worker safety, enhance human lives, and create a more equitable society.

“In India, it's like every five days one manual scavenger is dying due to manual scavenging. So, we thought this problem needed to be addressed very quickly.” The company’s engineers immediately began working on a robot that could do this type of work. Several months later, in 2018, Genrobotics released a robot called “Bandicoot.” Complete with four robotic legs, a robotic arm, and an expandable waste bucket, the Bandicoot is the world’s first manhole-cleaning robot. With infrared cameras, sensors, and computer vision, the robot can be readily operated from street level. “In India, in around 19 states, we got to deploy (the robots). And sanitation workers, we trained them and on boarded them into robotic operators. So, this thing has been a big impact on society and made a big impact on the people’s lives.”

“And we have R&D (research and development) on products for extreme environments, that is ‘Genboard.’ That is especially for nuclear power plants, firefighting kind of solutions. And also, we have innovations for facade cleaning of taller skyscrapers. So, glass can be cleaned using robotic drones.”

Genrobotics has also been developing robotic devices to improve health care. For example, one of their recent products is called the G Gaiter, a type of robotic exoskeleton designed to help restore locomotion for individuals with impaired mobility.

“So that got us different awards and support from the government. And we believe serving the nation and solving the societal problems of the entire world is the biggest purpose with the robotics.” “So, in (the) future robots are going to be in each and every corner of these services. Apart from that, I think every household will be having robots in their home to do their cleaning, washing and assisting their elder people. So, I think robots are going to help us in the future.”