Friday Lab: The team behind the humanoid robot Lee

Friday Lab is a team of five people that developed the humanoid robot, Lee. The robot can interact with people, walk, speak in Bangla and dance. The team was led by a former student of CSE, SUST, Noushad Sojib, Lecturer, North East University. The other members are former students of SUST:  Mehedi Hasan Rupok (Architecture), Saiful Islam (EEE), Mohammad Samiul Hasan and Zinia Sultana Joti (Mechanical Engineering).  They were under the supervision of Dr Mohammad Zafar Iqbal, Dr Shahidur Rahman and Md Ruhul Amin from the Department of CSE at SUST.

When did you start working on Lee?

Our first project Robot Ribo was completed in 2015. The robot could talk, dance, shake hands but not walk. In 2016, we started working on Lee. Our target was to create a complete social humanoid robot which can do a number of things, follow commands and has artificial intelligence. Lee was inaugurated on April 20 this year.

Before Ribo and Lee, what other projects did you work on?

 In 2013, we took the first step of creating a humanoid robot, titled, SUSTU-1. It was created by the organisation Robosust under SUST. In 2014, SUSTU-2 was created. It could write on its own, but that was not good enough.

What challenges did you face during the journey?

Although we are grateful to the Ministry of ICT for helping us, we do not have sufficient funds. We would also like to see specialised departments for robotics in different institutions. There is also a lack of quality instruments and efficiency. There is hardly any work done on robots in our country.

What is the future plan of Friday Lab?

Our plan is to make more robots like Atlas, Hubo and Sophia. To do so, we need research materials, quality products and funds. Through Lee, we have proved our potential.  Robots can help human beings greatly. Moving forward,  we want to make them more attractive and kid-friendly so that they can help children to learn different things.