Coco Robotics, which makes autonomous delivery robots, announced on Tuesday that it’s partnering with Niantic Spatial, the AI spinoff of the Pokémon Go developer. Niantic’s geospatial AI model, which was trained on images from AR scans in Pokémon Go, will help Coco’s robots find their way to your house.
After acquiring Arduino last October Qualcomm has announced a new single-board computer called the Ventuno Q. Pricing and availability aren’t known, but it will be powered by a Dragonwing IQ8 processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 40 TOPS NPU. It’s designed for building robots and machines that function autonomously in response to input from connected sensors.
Honor’s gimbal-equipped smartphone is here at MWC, and unlike at CES, it’s actually turned on. I got to see the phone unfold, look around, and dance to Imagine Dragons, and Honor has promised me I should see a few new demos on its booth tomorrow.
Honor’s press pass for its MWC press conference is a cute tease for the planned reveal of more details on the Robot Phone. Less cute? The pre-recorded applause being piped through the auditorium at regular intervals.
The Chinese smartphone company says it will reveal a humanoid robot at MWC this week, which I’m told will focus on domestic tasks. It’s a big change for the company, even with the Robot Phone also on the way, but makes more sense when you know it has an IPO in its future.
The shift comes just a few months after Amazon launched Blue Jay in October, calling it “an extra set of hands” for warehouse employees. Blue Jay wasn’t designed for the smaller, more flexible same-day delivery centers Amazon is focusing on now, though, including micro-fulfillment centers in the back of Whole Foods stores, as Business Insider reports.
Cardi had a little fun with a pint-sized humanoid in San Francisco. She ran her hands over its tiny silver body, got a little flirty, and then seemingly was caught off guard by its weight. She put her arms around its neck, it tilted forward, and they both hit the pavement.
DOJ documents released last week contain a $3 million funding request from roboticist David Hanson to build an “attractive female android,” complete with a “working gorgeous robot face and body.” The proposal includes a rough sketch of the “gynoid,” noting “the final design will be done collaboratively with you.”
How much does a human touch matter when it comes to a latte? It depends.
Mirumi is adorable. But living with it reminded me of the limits to the companionship a social robot can provide.
While robot vacuums are getting fancier and more sophisticated (there’s now one that can climb stairs!), there are lots of great budget bots you can get for just a couple of hundred bucks that will keep your floors swept and mopped.
Check out my top picks for the best budget robot vacuum and mop in my updated buying guide.
As first spotted by Matter Alpha, the Chinese drone manufacturer has joined the Connectivity Standards Alliance, the organization behind Matter.
This means it could potentially add Matter support to its new Romo robot vacuum line, allowing the robot to work with Apple Home, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, or any other Matter ecosystem.
Smart lights that know where they’re placed in a room, wild designs for next-gen routers, and a glowing inedible donut.
Sentigent Technology was showing off this tiny rugged outdoor companion at CES, highlighting its ability to tackle tough terrain and stairs. Though, with a battery life of just six hours and standing only 1.5 feet tall, it’s not gonna be able to through-hike the Appalachian.
Sentigent also suggests sending it out to the playground with your kids as a robo-babysitter. But that seems even more ill-advised.
The much promised AI-driven, do-it-all humanoid robots sure can dance in canned demos, but they bumble about slowly when faced with objects in the real world. Even when it’s just... carpet.
As my colleague Dom summed up yesterday, “We’re still not close to Rosey the Robot running our homes, but in the meantime the robot revolution is coming one single-purpose bot at a time.”
CES day 1 (or day 5, or day 200, depending on the calendar you observe) is coming to a close and we are all clearly feeling it. Case in point: I watched this robot walk out of the Central Hall and into the plaza where it threw a few punches and knocked itself out. Honestly? Big same. But we’ll be back at it again bright and early tomorrow. No word on the robot, though.
Who needs humanoid robots when your vacuum can sprout legs?
