Think of Jibo and Kuri as the great-grandparents of R2-D2, the buddy robot from Star Wars.
Of course, R2 was actually a 3 foot-8 inch dude crouching in a can. Jibo and Kuri are real robots with real artificial intelligence you can really take home (for US$900 and US$800, respectively).
Another way to think of them is what comes after talking speakers like the Amazon Echo and Google Home, which opened the door to new kinds of computers for the home.
Jibo, the brainchild of an MIT professor, looks like one of those know-it-all AI assistants borrowed a face and a twirling body from a Pixar movie. Kuri, made by a startup backed by appliance giant Bosch, looks like a penguin mounted on a Roomba vacuum.
I don’t expect either will be a top seller any time soon. They’re expensive, and their practical uses are few compared to other talking speakers or a Roomba that actually cleans. And to some of you, I’m sure the idea of “family” robots is pretty terrifying. Is this step one to Terminators marching the streets? Are they always watching?
Yet testing these robots with the help of people ages 3 to 75, I was struck by something different. For all their first-gen disappointments, the robots managed to melt hearts like a Shih Tzu puppy.
People, especially kids, wanted to hug them. Or at least to pet them, to which they both responded by purring. I’ve never seen a talking speaker do that.
What make Jibo and Kuri one giant leap for robot-kind isn’t their functions-it’s their personalities.
from Eve’s Feed http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/gadgets/99079961/Learning-to-love-robots-and-even-hugging-them
from
https://evewilki1971.wordpress.com/2017/11/21/learning-to-love-robots-and-even-hugging-them/
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