By Promise Eze
Just recently the Nigerian Government launched Africa’s first humanoid ‘Omeife’ to boost Artificial Intelligence (AI) and technological development in Nigeria and Africa.
But what the heck is a humanoid? A humanoid robot, sometimes called an android, is a robot that resembles a human. This thing could talk, stand and walk like a human being.
Where was this humanoid built anyway? It wasn’t built in the US, Japan or any of those fancy countries you’ll love to japa to. Omeife was built in Mabushi, Abuja, Nigeria, by Uniccon Group, a two-year-old Nigerian startup led by Chucks Ekwueme.
What are her special features? Omeife is a 6-foot-tall female, African humanoid that provides language as a service for businesses needing to integrate native African audiences.
She is also a multipurpose and assistance robot.
Omeife was built as a female Igbo character that understands and speak eight languages besides English, including Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, French, Arabic, Kiswahili, Pidgin and Afrikaans.
She also has terrain intelligence in that it knows its own ground level and stability on the floor, which helps it navigate on non-flat surfaces and maintain good balance.
Just in case you need her to prepare ‘eba’ for your family, how much would you use to purchase her? Uniccon Group is keeping the hope of improving the humanoid to the point of mass-producing and selling it for starting from $30,000 upward.
What the future holds for Omeife Uniccon? According to Uniccon, Omeife’s learning pipeline helps it improve and understand new things from conversations, and it can also recall and understand old concepts better with new information.
