British firm offering Rs 90 lakh for putting a person's face on robots

An unnamed robotics company is offering £100,000 to bag the rights of a face to be used on robots. The company forwarded its request to Geomiq, a data-driven manufacturing firm, to find a ‘kind and friendly’ face for robots which will act as a ‘virtual friend’ to elderly people. Geomiq claims that they develop and create products and prototypes across practically any sector, including robotics.

Non-disclosure agreement

Geomiq didn’t reveal the identity of the privately-funded robotics company due to a non-disclosure agreement. The manufacturing firm, in a blog, said that they were approached by a robotics company asking if they could help it with the finishing touches of a ‘state-of-the-art humanoid robot’ it’s been working on. 

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A human face on thousands of robots

The selected ‘kind and friendly face’ will be reproduced on thousands of versions of the robots worldwide.

“Obviously, this is not our usual remit of request, which is why we’re making this public appeal to try and find the right person,” said the company. “The designer knows that this is a big deal, and has agreed on a fee of £100,000 to license the rights to the right face,” it added.

Geomiq said that the project has been in development for five years and will go into production next year.

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Secretive project

According to Geomiq, the unnamed company has a number of investors including “a top fund based in Shanghai”. The company informed Geomiq that the project is 'secretive' in nature but claimed that the robots will be ‘readily available’ to the public soon.

“In conversation with the designer, he has also asked us to convey to hopeful people that even though we can’t release too many details at this early stage, candidates who make it through the next phase will be given full details on the project,” said Geomiq.

Geomiq acknowledged that signing over the licenses to one’s face is an extremely big decision and asked interested people to make a submission. A technology correspondent of British news channel called it a ‘Bad sci-fi plot’.

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