PH market seen warming up to robots
BANBROS Commercial, the exclusive distributor of UBTECH Robotics products, said on Friday it sees potential for the use of robots in the Philippines, especially in the education sector.
“We feel there’s a market for robotics. We see growth for the education market,” Banbros Commercial President Michael Bangayan said during the introduction of UBTECH’s new products.
Among them are the Alpha1 Pro interactive consumer robot and the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics)-friendly Jimu robots.
Alpha1 Pro is a household-based, programmable humanoid robot that can be used for education and entertainment. It has a 16-high-precision robotic servo motors and can copy human movements.
With Bluetooth 4.0, Alpha1 can be connected to its mobile app. Its software is available on the Microsoft Windows and Mac operating systems. The Alpha1 Pro is priced at P29,999 in a special Christmas promo from November 30 to December 31.
The Jimu robot, on the other hand, is an interactive robotic building block system that lets children build, program, and share their robotic creations.
UBTECH’S available line of Jimu Robot Kits in the Philippines include the Astrobot Kit (P 11,999), the BuzzBot and MuttBot Kit (P 9,999) and the Tankbot Kit (P 8,999).
entering the Philippine retail market. These products were only made avilable to the market two or three weeks ago, but we are now receiving a lot of inquiries from schools from as far as the Visayas,” Bangayan said.
He admitted, however, that while they see potential in the robotics industry, the purchasing power for robots here is still quite small, compared with that in the United States .
“I think the purchasing power for these products in the Philippines is not yet mature. But regardless on whether or not it would be successful, we are here to stay, especially in the education sector,” Bangayan said.
The Alpha1 and Jimu Robots are currently available at Toy Kingdom, SM Appliance branches, Astro Plus/ Astro Vision, Inforworx in SM Megamall in Mandaluyong City and PCworx on Gilmore Street in Quezon City. They would be available soon at at Toys R Us, Power Mac Center and Hobbes & Landes.