Categories
Imaging Robots/Drones

The Moorebot robotic assistant leaves you wanting more

The applications for robots at home, work, and business make the idea of having robotic assistants compelling, but none thus far have been truly capable of combining a truly responsive interface with personality. The closest thus far may be Amazon’s Echo, but it doesn’t get across the illusion of emotion quite like most would like it to.

The team behind the Moorebot made sure that was its main priority, designing a small, charming robot with a single, blinking eye that learns quickly and can engage in light conversation with users. It was created to work in a variety of settings with customizable, upgradeable behavior. In a shop, it can serve as a greeter and customer service agent that can answer questions about inventory, a store layout, specials, and promotions. At work, it can send messages and remind users of important events, read notes and reports, keep track of the home from afar, record video emails, and even entertain in times of boredom. At home, it’s the consummate entertainer, singing, dancing and playing with kids.

Categories
Connected Objects

KUMO desktop assistant tries to make you feel less lonely, winds up talking a lot

The modern age isn’t all its cracked up to be. While there are pretty incredible technologies being created every single day, the majority of people’s daily work is done on a single desk with a computer, some tools, etc., leaving lots of people alone while they work.

The team behind the KUMO hope their cup-sized little robot will be enough of a companion throughout the day to eliminate desk loneliness. Its different parts — a camera, microphone, LCD screen, speaker, battery, Wi-Fi module, and USB port — are all encased in a vaguely charming and eternally smiling plastic ghost body. With these parts, it can connect to social platforms and messenger apps like Facebook, Line, and WhatsApp and read out messages to users. In its Greeting mode, it can serve as a desktop assistant by recording messages left by others and pushing it to users’ smartphones while they’re away. In Security mode, KUMO turns into a desktop guardian by taking images and videos of moving objects scheming on valuables and pushing those out, too.