A new partnership announced by a Montreal robotics company is a good first step towards determining how service robots can add value to society through by creating social benefit and increasing business value.

C2RO Robotics, whose cloud platform was implemented in an experimental sensor data stream at MIT Senseable City Lab(SCL) last October, has announced a partnership with Chinese robot manufacturer Qihan Sanbot Robots.

READ ALSO: C2RO platform used in data stream experiment at MIT

A Montreal portfolio company of TandemLaunch, C2RO was recently part of an experiment at MIT that could help give us insights into better disaster relief. The company’s SaaS platform uses real-time data processing technologies to artificially enable any sensor, device or robot in a relatively quick and inexpensive way.

Qihan Sanbot is the leading service robot manufacturer in China, and the partnership will bring powerful cloud based cognitive augmentation to the Sanbot Elf, an intelligent cloud-enabled service robot.

“This integration is a significant milestone for the service robot industry,” said Ryan Wu, Director of Sales at Qihan. “We’re excited that Sanbot customers can now use the Elf platform for new and valuable applications that depend on real-time enterprise class face recognition. We’re already signing up new partners that wish to take advantage of this software capability.”

@C2RO_Robotics and @Sanbot_Robot announce partnership to bring cognitive augmentation and data analysis to Sanbot Elf! https://t.co/QaSTIY8IlR #ServiceRobots pic.twitter.com/Cmf6wGTTt4

— C2RO Robotics (@C2RO_Robotics) January 31, 2018

C2RO’s centralized real-time data processing and control architecture allows any connected robot to leverage the entire database of known faces, enabling critical business applications which require robots to share knowledge across multiple sites and geographies. The platform also uses a dashboard to monitor connected robots, visual statistics about the application, and an end-to-end software solution that can tie-in robots and edge devices to existing business software systems. Businesses can then better understand client behavior and preferences.

“We’re extremely excited about the partnership with Qihan. Customers can continue to leverage the reliability and quality of Qihan’s robots while having a simple software upgrade for increasing the robot’s perception and interactive potential,” said Riccardo Badalone, CEO of C2RO. “This new cognitive capability, combined with advanced data analysis tools, is creating new opportunities for service robots across industries such as hotels, airports, healthcare, retail, restaurants, offices, and more.”

The new partnership is the first step towards answering the question of how service robots will begin to create social benefit and increase business value.