The age of the robot is upon us. Take a gander at any social media feed and be met with dozens of stories about how they’re all going to either radically improve humanity or completely decimate it. While popular opinion lives in the extremes, robots still need to achieve a lot more to get there — although it’s certainly not stopping some from trying to some robotic presence into our lives sooner.
The Aijia Pro is sequel to a previously successful Indiegogo campaign (whose link doesn’t exist anymore) that peddled a ‘smart healthcare robot.’ Wisely, Delong Tech has decided to eschew any claims to healthcare features because they don’t exist in this version. Instead, the robot can monitor a household by moving around and rotating, using its motion detector to identify suspicious activity. This triggers an alert mode that sets up a real-time video call to the user’s smartphone.
Telepresence robots allow people who are away from home to check in on their pets and make sure burglars haven’t broken in. Regular viewers of the TV show The Good Wife know that telepresence robots can also be used to take part in office meetings when users are home sick or on a business trip. Such devices can also conceivably be used so that sick kids don’t miss important lessons at school. One major problem so far has been that these devices are too costly.
Telepresence robots are becoming more popular as they become cheaper. Remote-controlled devices provided by companies like