INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
When Anki invited us by the office last week to check out their latest creation, we weren''t sure what the expect
In the eight years since the company was founded by a trio of Carnegie Mellon graduates, it offered up a handful of distinctly different
smart toys, from its Drive smart cars to 2016 Cozmo robot
The truth is that the company latest creation looks an awful lot like its last
In fact, the only immediately apparent change is a dark coat of paint, akin to what the iMac received when it graduated to the iMac Pro
In fact, that probably a pretty solid analogy beyond just the color change, so let stick with that
Simply put, Vector is Cozmo for adults
In many ways, the new ‘bot is built on the lessons learned from Cozmo, coupled with more advanced internals
Vector has ~700 parts — double the number of its predecessor, while its brain is a much more advanced Snapdragon processor
Vector face also features a higher res display, making it capable of expressing subtler emotion redesigned by that staff of ex-Pixar and
Dreamworks animators the company employs
So, what does all of this add up to, exactly The company certainly has some grand ambitions
Anki believes its well positioned to offer users the gateway to the next generation of home robots
Both R2-D2 and Rosie from the Jetsons are casually name-checked in the company press release, naturally
The truth about Vector is more modest, though the product does seem like a much more mainstream solution than the recently departed Kuri
For one thing, it will run less than half the price at $250
That still $70 more than Cozmo, mind
Unlike Cozmo, however, Vector doesn''t require a constant smartphone connection — just WiFi — which is part of why having a more
advanced on-board computation system is important.
Along with that, Vector also gets an HD camera with a 120-degree field of view, so it
can double as a roaming security device (that functionality is coming next year) and four microphones, which allow it to Alexa-style
commands with a &Hey Vector.& Like Cozmo, the robot will also initiate conversation when you make eye contact, so you don''t have to summon
Instead of opting for Alexa or Google Assistant, however, the company used third-party knowledge graphs to build its own system, so Vector
doesn''t break character by launching another assistant
Like Cozmo, I suspect the company got a lot planned for the robot by way of software updates
For the time being, however, I haven''t seen a lot that convinces me that Vector much more than a slightly more advanced Cozmo — which
could make the pricey a robot toy a hard sell for serious adults
Broader ambitions should include a robot that can traverse more than limited range of a desktop, in order to better patrol the home
iRobot upcoming smart home plans for the Roomba serve as a potential way forward for home robotics, though Anki believes that it has the
upper hand here, by investing a good deal in personality from the outset
Perhaps people really do need that human to robot connection to really entrust their lives to such a device, though a compete lack of
personality certainly hasn''t hurt Amazon Echo or Google Home.
But Anki gets the benefit of the doubt here
This is all very early stages, and our early skepticism about Cozmo being a niche product was put to rest when the company managed to sell
Launching as a Kickstarter campaign should also help Anki assess early interest in the product and scale from there.
I remain skeptical as
ever that Vector is the mainstream home robot of the future — it seems more of a stepping stone, really
And certainly Anki is being transparent about its job of constantly building on the learnings of past models
At the very least, the company got the interest, revenue and the funding to avoid the recent pitfalls of Sphero and Kuri.
