Nursing, tourism and leisure, even performing arts, and anything dull, dangerous and dirty: the technology world is increasingly bullish on what humanoid robots can do.
Humanoid robots are already greeting visitors at Dubai’s Museum of the Future and patrolling the emirate’s beaches, handing out fines and monitoring the use of scooters and bicycles.
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, whose processors power the artificial intelligence behind humanoid robots, says humanoid robots will be working alongside people in manufacturing within five years.
“The Middle East is strategically positioned to explore these frontiers,” Moussa Beidas, a Middle East partner at professional services company PwC, tells AGBI. “While select pilot programmes may showcase early success, widespread deployment is likely to take longer.”
Predictions from financial services company Morgan Stanley suggest the global humanoids market could be worth more than $5 trillion by 2050, with 1 billion working robots.
Gulf government support and appetite for such initiatives is high.
There is, for instance, potential in healthcare “because it’s so understaffed that anything is better than nothing,” Carl Strathearn, lecturer in computer science at Edinburgh Napier University, tells AGBI.
The GCC averages 6.5 nurses per 100,000 residents, while the US is almost double that at nearly 12, according to Alpen Capital.
At King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center in Saudi Arabia, robots are already being used to offer information to doctors and staff and address technical support queries in Arabic and English.
The obstacle to development is software. AI is “nowhere near as reliable as it needs to be for humanoids to do just one job well, never mind many jobs at once,” says Strathearn.
More training data is required, he says.
Tourism and the leisure industry may present other opportunities.
These are growing sectors in the Gulf, especially in Saudi Arabia, which is seeking to transform its economy and reduce its reliance on oil. Encouraging religious tourism to its holy sites in Mecca and Medina, as well as vacations on the Red Sea coast, are top development priorities.
A hotel in Abu Dhabi has used robots for tasks such as checking in guests and offering gifts.
“Humanoid robots have the potential to significantly transform the tourism and leisure sector,” Frederick Van Gysegem, partner and head of people and organisation for the Middle East at management consultants Roland Berger, says.
Humanoids could be guides, collect data, provide feedback and perform in shows, he says.
For luxury markets, however, “a fine balance of keeping the human touch supported by technology would be a viable way forward,” says Van Gysegem.
