Meet Jibo, the world’s first family robot. The 11″ tall, 3 kg “sociable robot” learns what its owners’ faces look like, as well as their voices, so it knows who’s speaking to it and who it’s addressing. Its face is a large blinking ball beamed from a high-definition screen. Jibo can see (thanks to two high-res cameras), hear (using 360° microphones + natural language processing) and speak. Connected wirelessly to the Internet, Jibo delivers messages, organizes your itinerary, hosts video calls. Users can call on it to take photos or video of special family moments and it tracks body movement and facial expressions to make sure everyone’s in the shot and looks happy. It can also give out personalized reminders depending on who’s in the room and can sync with other smart appliances to learn owners’ preferences and daily habits.
The robot’s design incorporates three joints that allow the head to swivel around a full 360 degrees, track movement, monitor people’s actions, and respond to their presence. When the display screen is not steaming video, displaying a web page or text, it changes in order to convey emotions, responses, and (as already noted) blinks and winks in order to appear lifelike.
The robot is also hands-free, responding to verbal instructions and executing commands. This feature is expected to be fully interactive, allowing Jibo to talk with its users and even carry on conversations. It is apparently able to do voices as well (which will come in handy for the sake of storytelling) and has a mechanical laugh – though “chortle” is perhaps a better way to describe it.
Picture Credit : Google
