Love Takes Time {Completed} {#Wattys2017}

28. Meeting Deadline

                 On return from the business trip, Abhimanyu called Shanaya over intercom and asked her to share her work folder with him over intranet. Following morning, the entire Research and Development Team was called for a meeting in conference room.

Abhimanyu: I'm very happy with the work everyone is putting to make Peter happen. Peter is Neo(A humanoid robot by a french company) meets Amazon's Echo. It's your home assistant with ability do your chores and control your home devices at your voice command. Smart home devices can be controlled with phone apps and Echo, but they can only turn on/off the appliances connected to smart plugs/devices. Here is where Peter is different. Peter does all that and more. You can set it up do chores at your command or on it's own. He can physically scrub the dishes load the dishwasher, arrange them back in place after it's done. You can say "Do my laundry" or set it to do it by himself. If the later is chosen, he checks your laundry bin, when it is full, he separates clothes by it's type, washes and dries them for you. He can pick up stuff from refrigerator and cupboards, and microwave food for you. He can vacuum your house, clean your toilets. Basically, everything that keeps your home neat and tidy. We also plan to equip him with the skills to cook your favorite recipes for you when you return home tired, but that's in a distant future. He smiled.

Abhimanyu: Peter is also your personal assistant and a friend. He is equipped with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. He can play music for you while it works, and give you any kind of information you ask for- weather, news etc. Turn on TV for you and play any channel or movie of your choice. He can read you books, be a personal tutor of your kids. He can even talk with you when you are lonely and bored. You can tell him to be humorous or serious in in his interactions with you. Voice is all you need to give directives though it comes with an additional remote. It's everything you need to come home to relax and just do what you want to.

Abhimanyu: Our Mechanical guys Subru and Vineet have worked day and night to design the prototype of Peter, and work on real Peter is on. The prototype is almost ready and working.

 He paused and everybody clapped for Subru and Vineet.

Abhimanyu: Peter's arms and legs cascade to cater to different vertical lengths. He has 21 degrees of freedom. He has multiple wrist and finger movements to grab things of different shape, size and weight. He has binocular vision processing giving it the ability to perceive depth and perspective. After a few corrections suggested by us are done by the manufacturer, Peter will be standing among us waiting for it's multiple processors, sensors, speakers, microphones, cameras and software to actually show us what he can do. By the month end, I want every software and hardware we have for it to be integrated and tested. We can't have every function we have decided for of it ready now, but I want at least few of them ready by month end. I want everyone to buckle up, because it means a lot of work especially for Manoj's team.

Manoj: Yes, Abhimanyu.

Abhimanyu: Peter, we have now, is a prototype. It's not what we can launch in market. The real product needs million of dollars of investment that we don't have right now. I am in talks for multiple collaborations on it, both technical and financial with international companies. Most of them have shown a lot of interest in it, but we need to pick those whose interests are in our interests and not conflicting with them. When I personally meet them with my proposal, I don't want to just talk. I want to show them what we have. Something that they can integrate or incorporate in their own devices to see what it can do will be great, but I don't think that is possible at the moment. For now, when I go, I plan to show recording of Peter in action, but I want you guys to be prepared back here as I might want to connect through video conference to show them Peter. He looked at their nodding heads.

Abhimanyu: I am also in talks with rich businessmen , who want to expand into new segments invest in us. If that happens we can set up a manufacturing plant to manufacture Peters in India itself. We can bring it's cost down by turning it into a volume business. We might then, not need technical or financial collaborations with other companies and rely on our own, but in current scenario, we need them. Collaborations with  other well known companies will help our product get quality recognition and better reach in different parts of the world.