Vistara will station a robot named ‘RADA’ to attend customers at airports. Claimed to be the India’s first such robot, Rada will assist customers, address their queries and offer a seamless experience through an ‘intuitively thoughtful’ on-ground service. For the initial stage, Rada will be stationed at Vistara’s Signature Lounge at Delhi Airport’s Terminal 3 from July 5 onwards. ‘RADA’ will be further developed over a period of time in terms of functionality and features for future use cases, after gauging customer feedback.
‘RADA’ has been envisioned and incubated under Vistara’s Innovation initiative. It is conceived, designed and engineered by its team of technology experts and apprentices from Tata Innovation Lab with support from students of reputed institutions. It is arguably one of India’s most economical robots completely made of indigenous components, thus making a compelling ‘Make in India’ story.
Commenting on the introduction of ‘RADA’, Vistara’s Chief Executive Officer, LeslieThng said, “Innovation is one of the core values engrained in the DNA of Vistara’s culture, which we have fostered within the organization in many ways…With RADA, we aim to change the way people interact and fly with an airline. We will be developing ‘RADA’ based on customer feedback and equipping it with the most effective features in the time to come. Our steadfast focus remains to be on delighting customers across all touchpoints, and we’re confident that ‘RADA’ will help us take the ‘new feeling’ to the next level.”
Explaining what sparked the idea behind ‘RADA’, Vistara’s Chief Information and Innovation Officer, Ravinder Pal Singh, “It was a realisation that the talented, young employees engaged in ground services, gain immense customer service experience on the job, but the limited scope of their routine work could challenge their true potential. Some of them spend decades within the walls of an airport, assisting customers….”
At present, the robot can scan boarding passes and further provide information on the terminal, departure gates, weather conditions of destination city, real time flight status as well as information about Vistara’s products and services. It greets customers and interacts with them using basic hand movements, and is capable of moving around in the lounge on predefined pathways. Additionally, it can engage with kids and adults alike by playing games and other multimedia content such as songs and videos.