India's ICICI bank has claimed to be the first bank in the country to deploy industrial robotic arms to count currency notes.
It has deployed 14 machines in 12 cities to help sort more than six million notes on a typical day at its various currency chests.
said ICICI Bank Head of Operations & Customer Services, Anubhuti Sanghai.
"This brings in a frictionless and completely mechanised process of note-sorting, leading to higher accuracy and flexibility to handle large volumes continuously. It has enabled the bank personnel to focus on other value-added and supervisory functions," said Anubhuti Sanghai, head of operations and customer services at ICICI.
The robotic arms are used to pick up processed cash from the bank's various branches and then sort them to be resent back tot the branches. They use a combination of sensors to check more than 70 parameters per second, enabling them to operate for long periods without a break, said the bank.
Sanghai also said that the bank is the first in India and one of few globally to have taken such steps. ICICI's robot deployment does, however, come four years after Japan's Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi announced plans to deploy mini humanoid robots in its branches.