A new palm-sized robot is vying to become a favorite toy, equipped with a cheeky personality and hopes for a possible future entertainment franchise.Cozmo, a palm-sized microbot armed with sensors, motors and visual capabilities and controlled using a smartphone, is the latest product from San Francisco-based robotics startup Anki, the makers of Overdrive robotic racecar toy sets.Cozmo is not the first smartphone-controlled robotic toy. Similar products are available that can teach kids to code or just play games and perform tricks such as Sphero’s popular smartphone-controlled “Star Wars” BB-8 droid.But most robot toys do not come equipped with the capability to learn over time, Anki Chief Executive Boris Sofman said.”There’s certainly a lot of products out there that want to be a pet or a toy robot or robot companion, but all of them really lack the ability to truly see and understand their environment,” Sofman said.Cozmo’s personality is driven by artificial intelligence as he learns to recognize familiar faces and play games such as Quick Tap, in which he challenges a player to match colors.When he loses a game, he throws his building blocks in a tantrum, and when he wins, he likes to show off.”He wants to be this Jedi master but he’s not quite there yet so he has to uncover his skills … and you’re there to help him,” Sofman said.If it looks like a Pixar character, that is because Cozmo, out in October and priced at $179, was inspired by the playful, heartwarming bots seen in animated films such as “Wall-E,” and co-designed by a former Pixar animator.”As we were looking at these movies from Pixar, from DreamWorks, at these incredible characters, we started asking what would it take to make a character like that actually come to life in the real world,” Sofman said.Anki envisions a future on the big screen for Cozmo, including new robot friends and a possible weekly episodic series.”We’re looking at the franchise as a studio for interactive characters and stories,” Sofman said.Amid wider public concerns of how apps can collect data from users to pass onto other parties, Sofman said Cozmo pairs solely with individual users’ smartphones and no information leaves the device.”There’s no personal or identifiable information that’s actually being in any way transmitted,” Sofman said.
Related Articles
History marked
May 22, 1926 Establishment of Great Smoky Mountains National ParkPresident Calvin Coolidge signed a bill establishing the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The idea to establish the park in North Carolina and Tennessee originated in […]
Entertainment briefs
‘Fate of the Furious’ Rides to Third Straight No. 1 while ‘Latin Lover’ Tops Tom Hanks in ‘The Circle’It has become a familiar story “The Fate of the Furious” is, once again, the box […]
Up, Up and Away!
FUQUAY-VARINA The sky was a kaleidoscope over eastern Wake County for Memorial Day weekend. The annual Freedom Balloon Fest, put on by Project Uplift USA, Raleigh Jaycees and WRAL, welcomed an estimated 80,000 visitors […]