Perm Promobot is one of the largest companies in the field of service robots in Europe and the manufacturer of the android Dunyasha, which became one of the most mentioned "persons" of the last St. Petersburg Economic Forum along with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the head of the DNR Denis Pushilin, according to Brand Analytics.
Promobot can be called one of the main exporters of the Perm Region, which is actively developing in the markets of Europe and the USA until February 24, 2022. What has changed in the company, whether domestic Elbruses can replace Intel and why it is important to create realistic android robots, Oleg Kivokurtsev, co-founder of Promobot, told Interfax special correspondent Irina Lee in an interview.
- In one of your interviews, you said that most of the company's exports go to the United States, with 70% coming from the American public sector. What has changed now?
- I'll start with the background. Since 2016, we have been actively selling our products abroad: in 2018, 60% of the products were exported, in 2019 - 40%. And, basically, these are the Middle East (Kuwait, UAE), the CIS (Kazakhstan, Belarus), European countries and the USA in 4th place.
When we decided to develop more actively in the USA, a pandemic came. We quickly reoriented our product and made an automated station with temperature measurement, ahead of even the Chinese here. Therefore, 40% of the revenue began to be received from the United States, and, indeed, 70-80% was brought by the public sector (hospitals, schools, a police station and even a prison). But as soon as they started shooting lockdowns around the world, including in the USA, the need for temperature measurement began to fade. Plus, the Chinese entered the market, with whom it became difficult to compete in price, and this direction has slowed down for us. Besides, having worked in the USA, we saw a lot of disadvantages there, we didn't like it there, so we decided to focus on the Middle East in 2022.
And, as it turned out, not in vain. It is February 24, the market situation has changed. Demand in the European markets began to fall: despite the fact that we are an international company and we have a good product, business representatives were very afraid of the cancellation culture - applications for our products fell by 80%. They told us: "We really like your product, but if we continue to buy from you, our customers will say that we are financing Russia, and they will stop their relations with us."
Therefore, I think we were lucky, we were unconsciously ready for this. Now we continue to work with the markets of the Middle East, there are no problems here, all payments are made, we conclude contracts with both the public sector and private companies of the UAE. We continue to supply to Saudi Arabia, the CIS. It is also interesting to enter the markets of the Asia-Pacific region.
- But there's a lot of competition with China?
- Yes, it's true, but we have advantages: cheaper price, since we make Russian components, reliability - our robots are also called "Kalashnikov from robotics" (you put it in a trunk, it crosses the jungles of Brazil, you take it out - and everything works). And most importantly - lifetime service. During the entire operation period, customers can write any question or report a problem. That is, we do not part with the client, unlike the Chinese, who are hunting for a "fast dollar".
- You mentioned that you faced big disadvantages in working in the American market. What were they?
- Firstly, the culture of using the product. For example, here or in Dubai, if you don't understand something about complex technology, you will contact technical support. But in the USA, with any difficulties, they simply do not use the product, and it is idle. From the outside, it looks like something is wrong, and the equipment is faulty. They have such a culture: everything should work from one button.
The second reason is a very dangerous country from the point of view of doing business. As soon as you show weakness, lawyers will come running and try to sue everything. This is literally a country of lawyers. For example, if someone for some reason cannot press a button, then a complaint is immediately written that the product does not work. And according to the contract, you have to fix this problem in a certain period of time. If you don't, you will be billed for downtime at best. In the worst case, they will send the equipment back and force you to return the money and pay compensation. All dialogue should be conducted through lawyers, and the cheapest costs $ 100 per hour. So many companies found themselves trapped by American lawyers and paid multimillion-dollar sums.
- Maybe this is due to the fact that you were just unlucky and got unscrupulous partners?
- No, we studied different options. Sometimes it comes to the absurd: for example, an employee does not have access to electrical equipment according to the job description, and he cannot even insert a robot into an outlet. That is, a person is clearly sharpened for one task. Everyone is afraid of unnecessary responsibility and does everything according to the instructions. Such a mentality.
- You also said that robots consist of 20% of foreign components. Given the problems with the supply of foreign components, are you ready to switch to domestic "Elbrus"?
- We would be very happy to supply components from Russia. We like working with Russian suppliers: you speak the same language with them, you pay in the same currency, you are in the same legal field, and if something does not suit you, you can always call, quarrel and find a compromise. It's more difficult with foreign ones, simply because you speak different languages with them. But we are a commercial company and we are guided by the cost price: if these components do not greatly overestimate the final cost for the client, then we will definitely use them. While "Elbrus" costs 5-6 times more expensive than Intel processors, but if there is something available, then why not.
- In addition to robots, you are also developing your own speech recognition system. At what stage of development is it? What can he already do?
- Yes, there is such a development called AI box, offline speech recognition. But along with her use of design and Google, Yandex. From the perspective of prospects, we would like to separate it into a separate product and sell it. But we don't understand the demand yet.
Now we are focusing on another direction - the dialog system. To put it very roughly, these are chatbots with artificial intelligence. To do this, we have been developing a linguistic base for seven years so that the robot can answer questions in natural language, and here we have achieved good results: our robots answer questions quite intelligently, compared to the same voice assistants. And here there is a demand, for example, among mobile operators.
- Do I understand correctly that right now your robots are responding to preloaded answers, not based on the context?
- The first level of responses is related to its activity - it is preloaded. The second level, for example, general questions, frequently used "how are you", etc., are also preloaded. There is a third level - these are abstract conversations, when the robot is told words unknown to him like "abracadabra". Then he laughs it off and redirects to the dialog. This is the basic technology used on most of our robots. Because, as a rule, the task of most clients is to sell the service, and the transaction should be completed as soon as possible, so there is no point in developing complex branched dialogues.
Nevertheless, we have a neural network, this dialog system, which we want to sell as a separate product.
- Are you interested in the market of social robots, for example, have you thought about making robots-nurses, companion robots, where just your experience in conducting complex dialogues and creating humanoid androids will be needed?
- Yes, we worked on this issue, studied the market, but did not find a client in Russia. Unlike, for example, the USA, we do not have nursing homes, centers for the elderly. It's a huge market there, and we just don't have it. Therefore, for now we have stopped at service robots and solving specific tasks.
- Then why did you start making humanoid robots for service tasks? You could have left the same white box.
- Here we were guided by a study called "The Sinister Valley of Robotics". There is the first peak of robotics development, for example, our fourth "Promobot" model is located on it: it vaguely resembles a person, he has abstract eyes, hands, etc. Next come robots that already have eyes, skin like a human. Then there is a sharp rise: robots that completely resemble humans. They are perceived by society much better than any other devices. This "similarity" is very important, as it directly affects the financial performance and quality of service. The company that comes at this very peak can claim the first place in the emerging market of service robots. That's why we started going in this direction.
- That is, the more a robot looks like a human, the better its perception by a human, and the more effective it is, from a marketing point of view?
- Yes, the more positive emotions it brings.
- Doesn't rejection occur when a car becomes too human-like?
- When it is too similar, it is a peak on that chart, then, on the contrary, it is good. But when a robot becomes like a human, but not too much, then yes, there is rejection, it is perceived negatively. There is an association with leprous patients, from whom you want to stay away so as not to get infected. But we need to get out of this "sinister valley" and come straight to androids identical to humans.
- And at what peak of this graph are your robots?
- We are now at the exit of this "valley". Before that, we made robots with not too similar to human skin, unnatural facial expressions - some even said that the faces looked like alcoholics or stroke patients. The robots' hands moved too abruptly. Now we are already in the middle of leaving the "valley". For example, we made Dunyasha, which became the most popular stand at the SPIEF, no longer at the bottom of this peak, but in the middle. Just a little more and we'll move up.
- That is, "Dunyasha" is your model as close to reality as possible? But she still looks like a doll.
- Yes, it's true. But look at the prototype: this woman also has a doll-like appearance (the prototype was the wife of the Perm businessman Rashid Gabdullina - Diana Gabdullina - approx. IF).
- By the way, about "Dunyasha". Are you planning to turn it into a separate business direction and earn money from it, or was it a private order and a PR move for SPIEF?
- The goal of "Dunyasha" is commercial, it is already "earning". We have made two versions of "Dunyash", and the one that stands in a park in Perm already brings in a million rubles of revenue per month - these are excellent indicators for a coffee shop. She is perceived very positively.
"Dunyasha" is not only a robot, it is a whole complex with a robotic arm, equipment for issuing cold and hot drinks, you can't buy it without a cybercafe. There are many examples in the world with automated vending machines, manipulator arms, but if you look at that graph, they are at the very beginning of the journey and do not cause emotions in the buyer, unlike humanoid robots.
After the SPIEF, more than 200 applications have come, and we are currently processing them. I am sure that by 2024 we will see a robocafe with other characters.
- How is the business model built? Do you get interest on sales from these cybercafes?
- "Dunyasha" was created according to a certain concept of businessman Rashid Gabdullin (the owner of the Amusement Park named after him. Gorky in Perm - approx. IF), who created a whole company "Robin Hood Robotics" for this purpose in order to sell such cybercafes. We agreed that the customer brings us customers. His company receives revenue from the sale of coffee, and we receive revenue from the production of robots. We are just performers in this project.
- As a participant in the technology market, do you think that the support measures taken by the government will help companies in this crisis situation? Are there enough of them?
- As for getting free capital, entrepreneurs will always tell you that, of course, there is not enough, they are always not enough and you want more. But it's better than it was, we use all the support measures and approve of them.
Now many venture investors have left, and this, of course, affects the number of successful startups. But with such support measures, they are trying to equalize this circumstance: instead of private money, public money has come.
- The topic of the departure of IT specialists has been raised a lot in the media. Have you encountered a frame leak at home?
- As far as I know, no one has left. There were emotional fears at first, but people calmed down quickly. I personally know some friends from other companies who have emigrated, but I am sure that they will return, they just found an internal justification to downshift. And as long as we communicate with colleagues from other robotics companies, no one has left.
