Researchers at the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Rourkela have developed an indigenous AI-powered social robot that can communicate with humans in a natural and human-like manner. The institute has secured a patent for the innovation, which combines speech, gesture, emotion recognition and artificial intelligence on a single, cost-effective platform. The robot is designed to understand everyday language, follow spoken commands, answer questions and hold real-time conversations, going beyond fixed or pre-programmed responses. It uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) to analyse user inputs and generate natural-sounding replies. NIT Rourkela has received Patent No. 574589 for the system. The research findings have also been published in the international journal Computers and Electrical Engineering by Elsevier. The paper was co-authored by Dr Anup Nandy, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Dr Asim Kumar Naskar, Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering, along with research scholar Sougatamoy Biswas and MTech graduate Rahul Saw. One of the key features of the robot is its ability to recognise human emotions. By analysing facial expressions, the system can …