India’s Red FM has come up with Robot Rashmi – the world’s first Hindi-speaking humanoid robot, as a radio host.

Robot Rashmi has been indigenously developed by Ranjit Srivastava – a Ranchi-based software engineer, for Rs 50,000 ($700) over two years.

Designed on the lines of Sophia Robot, developed by Hong Kong-based Hanson Robotics, it is the country’s first lip-syncing robot that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI), Linguistic Interpretation (LI), visual data and face recognition systems enabling it to act and answer queries like a human being.

The robot’s show, #AskRashmi was launched last week and airs twice a day – from 10 am to 11 am in the morning and from 5 pm to 6 pm in the evening.

During the show, the robot interacts with the callers and responds to their questions. These conversations vary between topics like politics, environment, road safety with an understanding of human emotions.