Photo: Xinhua

Russian professional basketball club Parma has hired a very promising assistant for the head coach, and it is hoped that the new employee's "extraordinary" skills will help the team - from the city of Perm - to dominate in the national tournament this season.

A robot with installed AI (artificial intelligence) will help the head coach during home games to gather and analyze data on players, their stats and behavior and, it is thought, eventually advise on better roster rotation for the team.

"Robots remove from human part of routine duties, freeing up time for more important things. Therefore, our robots are already working as consultants, guides, concierges — in all these professions, people unnecessarily spend their energy performing the same type of operation. The coach of the team during the game also spends his resources and attention on the analysis of statis, remembering the" five "players and other "routine" moments of the game. Promobot will take this job on its own, quickly and accurately providing the coach with a ready-made analysis", according to the Promobot business development director, Oleg Kivokurzev.

The creators of the "talented" newly enrolled staffer claim that a contract signed on Thursday between the Promobot company and Parma made history because their cutting edge robot will be the first to be present during games at court side, along with the players.

Kivokurzev said Thursday, cited by Russian media, that "a team from the NBA earlier expressed an interest" in aquiring a robot with similar capability.

Promobot is a company that designs robots, and was established in the central Russian city of Perm in 2015. Currently they are also represented in the Russian Skolkovo Innovation Centre.