Sastra Robotics, a start-up incubating under Kerala Start-up Mission (KSUM), will export 150 robots to the UK as part of an agreement with one of the top IT companies in that country. 

The robots, using Artificial Intelligence (AI), perform quality testing tasks that cannot be done by human beings, an official statement said here on Thursday. Equipped with advanced robotic arms, they function like human hands and fingers and are primarily used to detect defects in areas like mobile, space, defense, banking, and sophisticated equipment, it said. 

Aronin Ponnappan, co-founder and CEO of Sastra Robotics, said the robots developed by our nascent firm have added another feather to projects like 'Made in Kerala' and 'Make in India'. 

"Also, for a Kerala start-up to bag such a big contract can be termed as the first-ever in the robotics sector. It has given us an opportunity to showcase our technological prowess in the field of robotics in Britain,” he said. 

The robots, completely designed and developed in Kerala, will reduce human intervention in discovering hardware and software failures in electronic smart devices with touch screens besides predicting the reasons for those failures by deploying AI technology, the statement further said. 

The customers of Sastra Robotics, which has won several awards at the national and international level, include big names like German company Robert Bosch, HCL, Qualcomm, Tech Mahindra, and ABB.  

Besides Britain, Sastra robots, are being exported to the US also. KSUM is the nodal agency of the Kerala government for entrepreneurship development and incubation activities in the state.