An avatar isn’t always the answer

At the heart of everything we do at Robotica is the unshakeable belief that humans are best: no matter how incredible AI may be, it isn’t a substitute for a person. The warmth, empathy and trust of interacting with a human being is irreplaceable. With that in mind, we always encourage use of Deaf translators or RSLI interpreters as the default choice: Nobody wants a computer explaining a court ruling or giving them a medical diagnosis. When a human translation is a realistic possibility, hire a person for the job. And for everything else, there’s Robotica.

We fill in the gaps, where translators are not available, or when interpreters may not be the best fit. We make sign language translations that would not otherwise get made.
There simply are too few translators and interpreters, nowhere near the numbers needed to keep up with the accelerating rate of content creation. Every single minute of every day, 8 new books are published. In that time, 500 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube, and 175 new websites are made - an average of 2,000 pages per minute. With 1,000 times as many translators, people who use sign languages would still be denied almost all of the information and entertainment that most of us take for granted.

An alternative to captions

Reading isn’t a great option for everyone, including 87,000 people in the UK whose first or only language is British Sign Language. Before Robotica, the choices faced by d/Deaf people for these gaps was “captions or do without?”. Cassie and our other avatars add a third possibility - AI sign language.