It purrs when you rub its gold-plated back
”. Late last year, the squat, almost featureless Jibo graced the cover of Time Magazine’s “best inventions” edition.The key for Vector and other companion robots, experts say, is to strike the right balance between usefulness and personality.In late July, another startup, California-based Mayfield Robotics, ceased manufacturing Kuri, a roving 699 machine that would shoot pictures and video from cameras hidden behind its round, blinking eyes.Instead of cute, ElliQ aims for calm.“You cannot sell a robot for 800 or 1,000 that has capabilities of less than an Alexa,” said Boris Sofman, CEO of Anki, which plans to launch its pet-like Vector this fall.Fall short on personality, and “you better be perfect because the moment you make a mistake, you’re going to be the big lumbering robot that made a mistake,” Sofman said.Personal home robots that can socialize with people are starting to roll out of the laboratory and into our living rooms and kitchens.Jibo, a foot-high, vaguely conical device topped by a wide hemispherical “head,” stays where you put it, typically on a countertop. Such robots could remind seniors to take medicine, prompt them to get up and move or visit others and help them stay in better touch with extended family and friends. They scoot around on tank treads and chirp more than talk, household appliance injection mold but Vector can answer basic questions, set a timer or deliver mesغير مجاز مي باشدes from email and texts.Hopes for social robots keep outpacing reality.
It purrs when you rub its gold-plated back. They don’t much resemble their fictional predecessors; they mostly don’t walk, only sometimes roll and often lack limbs.“It’s a really cool device, but it didn’t offer a ton of utility,” Singh said. But people can forgive errors so long as the robot reacts in a realistic way.That hasn’t stopped ambitious robot-makers from launching life-like robots into the market — albeit with mixed results so far. The robot is expected to launch next year. Its creator, MIT robotics researcher Cynthia Breazeal, told The Associated Press at the time that “there’s going to be a time when everybody will just take the personal robot for granted. “Once people are convinced something is useful or actually saves them time, they’re really good at adapting.“We were looking for an aesthetic that will earn the right to be part of people’s life for a long period of time, not just a gadget or a toy,” said Dor Skuler, Intuition’s founder and CEO. (Affordability also seems pretty important. But it can swivel its flat, round screen “face” to meet your gaze; tells a joke and plays music, and can shimmy convincingly if you ask it to dance. Israeli startup Intuitions Robotics brought on prominent industrial designer Yves Behar to help craft the look of ElliQ, which is designed for seniors.Promising a robotic future beyond “puck-like vacuum cleaners and lifeless cylindrical talking speakers,” Anki is pitching the 249 Vector as an older brother to its tiny — and feisty — toy robot Cozmo. Other home robots, such as the three-foot, video-screen equipped personal assistant Temi (1,499) and Sony’s dog-like Aibo (1,800), are even less affordable. And they’re nowhere close to matching the language, social skills and physical dexterity of people. Since then, advances in artificial intelligence have propelled the field forward.Anki hired animators from Pixar and DreamWorks to give character to Cozmo and Vector.“Whether that’s by helping with loneliness, helping with tasks like cooking, that’s key,” he said.
Designed to sit on an end table, the robot is shaped like a rounded table lamp with a circular light shining from inside its translucent plastic head.) Though there’s plenty of diغير مجاز مي باشدreement over what makes the proper balance. It was pitched as “the world’s first social robot for the home.”That time has not yet arrived.Many researchers say social robots hold great promise in helping an ageing population. But they’ll be limited to very specific uses, he warned.Two pioneers in a new vanguard of cute, sociable robots — Jibo, a curvy talking speaker, and Kuri, a cartoonish wheeled “nanny” — have been early casualties. It’s still for sale online, but its parent company reportedly laid off much of its workforce in June and didn’t reply to requests for comment. The popularity of Alexa and its ilk has also helped take the strangeness out of talking machines.Both robots are tiny enough to fit in your palm.“I think we’re going to start seeing some come to market this year,” said Vic Singh, a founding general partner of Eniac Ventures, which has invested in several robotics startups. The makers of Vector, a less expensive home robot that was unveiled Wednesday, hope theirs will be a bigger hit.For the robots to catch on across all ages, though, they need to prove themselves useful and helpful, said James Young, a researcher at the University of Manitoba’s human-computer interaction lab. It can rest on a tabletop until it hears a door open or, using facial recognition, “sees” a familiar person in view.Still others, including a rumoured Amazon project and robots designed to provide companionship for senior citizens, remain in the development phase. It swivels frequently, directing attention to the person it’s speaking with and has an adjacent tablet screen to show off photos or text mesغير مجاز مي باشدes. But are humans ready to invite them into their lives?It’s taken decades of research to build robots even a fraction as sophisticated as those featured in popular science fiction.”At almost 900, though, Jibo didn’t win anywhere near enough friends.Worse, they’re so far losing out to immobile smart speakers made by Amazon, Apple and Google, which غير مجاز مي باشدt a fraction of what early social robots do, and which are powered by artificial-intelligence systems that leave many robots’ limited abilities in the dust.Social robots trace their lineage back to an interactive humanoid head named Kismet, which Breazeal built in an MIT lab in the 1990s
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