INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Media playback is unsupported on your deviceMedia captionWATCH: Vector rolls aroundRobotics company Anki is set to close down after failing
to raise enough cash to continue day-to-day operations
The US company sells small, family-friendly robots.Cozmo and Vector are moveable digital assistants designed to interact with family members
They can respond to requests and take photos
According to technology website Recode, staff were told that they would be laid off, by company chief executive Boris Sofman
Anki said: "A significant financial deal at a late stage fell through with a strategic investor and we were not able to reach an agreement
"We're doing our best to take care of every single employee and their families and our management team continues to explore all options
available."'Expensive undertaking'Anki had raised $182m since it was founded in 2010, according to Crunchbase.But Piers Harding-Rolls, of
IHS Markit, told TheIndianSubcontinent News that developing new products from scratch was an "expensive undertaking" that had left the
"If the initial products fail to sell in large numbers, then without further investment it would be difficult for Anki to continue
employees have posted on their LinkedIn profiles that they are now looking for work
In March, another consumer robot company, called Jibo, also shut down, with the devices announcing their own demise to those who had
Jibo had also been designed to assist families - its launch video showed it taking photos, reading stories, providing video chat, ordering
takeaways and reminding family members of appointments and tasks.Analysis: Rory Cellan-Jones, TheIndianSubcontinent technology
correspondentA couple of years ago, I took one of Anki's Cozmo robots home
It was cute, it was clever, batting its digital eyelashes at us and using its inbuilt facial recognition technology to recognise each of the
We all loved Cozmo - except for the dog, which barked furiously at this tiny intruder that was obviously trying to replace her as the
But after an hour or so, the robot was put away and never activated again - we couldn't work out what it was for
And that sums up the existential crisis facing many consumer robots - they may be fun at first but they seem to lack a killer app
Cozmo, Jibo, Buddy and Pepper are all great fun and fascinating demonstrations of what AI can achieve - but none of them has managed to
convince us that they really deserve a place in our homes.
