The Nigerian government last Friday launched Africa’s first humanoid robot, Omeife developed by the Uniccon Group.
Speaking at the robot’s unveiling, the director-general of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa who represented the minister of communications and digital economy, Prof. Isa Ali Pantami, who was to serve as a proxy for the vice president, Prof. Yemi Osibanjo, said the innovation signifies a dawn in the nation’s journey to becoming one of the digitally visible countries in the world.
“Most of the robots we have are not African so we are excited to see Omeife today with African data built and looking African because this will help us to boost our technology locally and to promote our culture and values because if we say we are going to use what is built somewhere, it will be difficult for us to benefit from the artificial intelligence,” Inuwa said.
He affirmed the support of the federal government for the domestication of the technology urging the tech community to find measures that would ensure that Artificial Intelligence systems are built according to policies, regulations, and laws and also domesticate such innovation in line with the Nigerian culture.
Speaking on the Omeife project, the CEO Uniccon Group of Companies, Chuks Ekwueme, explained that Omeife as an AI applies to almost every area of human endeavour as it is powered with data that makes and gives it near human resemblance in terms of language, competency, movement, navigation and behaviour using AI and computer vision capabilities.
“We are happy to play a part in helping businesses and people all over Africa to achieve their fullest potential by providing access to the most innovative technologies for efficiency,” he said.
“Our motivation for Omeife is that Africa has been lagging in technology and we keep forcing ourselves to use technology that is not designed for us hence, we came up with the initiative to bridge this technology gap in Africa and start making technology tailored to meet the needs of Africa and Nigerians.
“Omeife brings a lot of value in boosting security depending on the usage. If it is surveillance, intelligence gathering, Robo-army, profiling, and lie detection or even in the area of sending robots to missions that are very deadly but with the humanoid in place, all these will be taken care of.”
On the characteristics of Omeife, Ekwueme said the robot can speak different languages including English, Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, French, Arabic, Kiswahili, Pidgin, Wazobia, and Afrikaans with a native accent, pitch, and vocabulary, with detailed pronunciations of words, sentences, and even phrases.
He said the six-foot-tall female African humanoid has a real-time understanding of its surroundings, including active listening and the ability to focus on a specific conversation thread as it occurs.
“It identifies and tags humans through the face and facial expressions, paying attention to a specific item when required. It identifies objects, knows their characteristics, and also calculates positions and distances of objects it sees,” he added.
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