Rhaime Kim: Design is More Than Functional

Wandering around in a mall, a robot about the height of a child walks next to you, what do you think about it? Do you see it as a bulky piece of machine, or a cute little friend?

Rhaime Kim, Chief Operating Officer of the autonomous robotics startup Rice Robotics, discovered that some robots on the market are practical but "look like an assembly of components and look strange". However, the determining factor for a robot to be widely accepted goes to human experience.

Success in Japanese Market

Rice Robotics attaches great importance to the design work. Every of their robots has a face, but they do not imitate the appearance of human beings. They also have nice lines and shapes. The round shape and bright eyes of the indoor delivery robot, Rice, make it friendly to people at any age, even in Japanese where Rice can be found in the convenience stores and post offices.

Besides Rice, Rice Robotics also has disinfection robots named Jasmine, and security and patrol robots, named Portal. Each robot is equipped with cameras and navigating functions, and can shuttle between different floors by elevators and avoid obstacles along the way.

Openness and Flexibility

Despite the advanced functions, Rhaime is open to customer opinions. There were customers suggesting the robots monitor whether anyone has forgotten to wear a mask, while some hoped the robot could detect food residues on the floor, “We will analyze the practicability of the requests. For mission impossible, we will go back to the customers and explain clearly,” said Rhaime.

With this creative and flexible team of Rice Robotics, shall we expect more and more cute mechanical friends to appear next to us very soon?

Rhaime Kim

Head of Operations, Rice Robotics

Rice Robotics is an autonomous robotics startup in Hong Kong building multifunctional delivery, disinfection and patrol robots that can navigate, operate elevators and charge without help. Prior to Rice, Rhaime was a VC at Van Wickle Ventures and served as deputy CMO at the pre-IPO fund Central Exchange. Rhaime holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Brown University.