Being Chintu: All you need to know about MIT Pune's robot for the elderly

Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT), Pune, in collaboration with IBM, on Thursday introduced Chintu -- a robot designed to assist senior citizens in conducting everyday tasks.

Chintu, who was unveiled during the ongoing MIT Tech Fest 'Texephyr', can do everything from setting reminders to dancing to Gangnam Style.

"The robot has opened up a new and exciting research avenue for our students. Robotics, machine learning and cognitive computing are interesting and exploring fields of research today and our students are getting first hand experience of working in these fields," MIT Pune's Head of Computer Engineering Department Vrushali Kulkarni told IANS.

"What I like most about Watson is that it can solve real world problems. These services can be used as and when required, and are always accessible," said MIT Pune student Krishnamohan Manmohan.

Here's everything you might want to know about Chintu:

#1 Chintu is two-foot tall and weighs around 5 kgs. It has a microphone, multiple cameras, multiple on-board sensors and an internal memory of 8GB. The MIT team is working on not only enhancing existing features, but adding new ones too.

#2 Chintu gets its intelligence from IBM Watson -- a cognitive technology that can think like a human -- and the IBM Bluemix Cloud platform. Watson APIs powered by IBM Bluemix guide the robot through solving day to day problems, the American technology giant said in a statement.

"This is a great example of co-creation. You put great technology in the hands of bright and enthusiastic students, you give them freedom and a fun element and India's next generation of engineers start to do magical things. This is the way in which innovation will happen in the future," said Mezjan Dallas, University Relations Leader at IBM India.

#3 With support from Watson, Chintu is perfectly capable of reading text and can thus help the elderly in reading newspapers, books.

'Chintu' can also read! #CognitiveAssistant #MITroboChintu #IBMWatson #IBMIndiaUR #MITTechfest #Texephyr pic.twitter.com/YJd6jMSdwX- Gayathrie Maediratta (@GGMAEDI) March 16, 2017

The cognitive assistant has the capability to perform a lot of other simple tasks, like reading, recalling capitals of different countries and telling you the time in the other countries.

#4 Chintu can set reminders as instructed by its owner - it just needs to be given a time, date and purpose for the reminder.

#5 Chintu is a bit of an entertainer too, with its capability to sing, dance and even emulate Shah Rukh Khan.

In its introductory video, MIT Pune students showed Watson dancing to the 2012-hit Gangnam Style on cue.

#6 Chintu has the capability to detect emotions from the change in tone and respond accordingly. It uses the Tone Analyser API to effectively detect emotions.

#7 It takes an individual between two and three days to get used to Chintu. Its programming can also be customised to suit the needs of the person.

#8 Chintu is being developed by four final-year students at MIT Pune - Krishnamohan Manmohan, Rishab Dasgupta, Astitva Shah and Sanketh Gupta - with blessings from IBM, which provided a Rs 10 lakh grant under its Global Shared University Research grant programme.

Introducing "Chintu" @MIT Techfest 2017, Pune #Texephyr #IBMIndiaUR #MITroboChintu #IBMWatson pic.twitter.com/FB4yJysu1N- Gayathrie Maediratta (@GGMAEDI) March 16, 2017

The robot came from French firm SoftBank Robotics, while the students devised the software that allowed it to interact with people real time. They began working on Chintu in January just this year.

"The future of innovation will be co-creation and that is what this is. This is deep research in the hands of the students who learnt quickly and put this together in just eight weeks," Dallas told Economic Times.