Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Vector: Anki’s tiny robot that wants to hang”.
Hey Vector. ( robot chimes ). My name is Dieter. ( robot chimes ) [, Vector ] Diter.
Diter. [ Andrew ], You’re, Diter, apparently., (, upbeat music ). This little guy right here he’s named Vector. He’s a home robot from Anki and here’s a question. What can you do with him Now if you’re familiar with Anki, you know that they make another robot called Cozmo. That looks a lot like this little dude, but the differences are that this thing is way more powerful.. It’S designed to be always on it’s connected to wifi, and it knows what’s going on around it all the time., It’s just sort of lookin’ around hanging out.
And it has a lot more powerful technology in it too.. So there’s a laser sensor on the front. Little capacitive sensor here so it can feel if you’re petting it. It has four microphones. So it can hear you say its name and respond to you and answer questions like what’s the weather like To understand what all of that means, we came to Anki’s offices here in San Francisco to talk to the people that made Vector and find out what they Think you can do with it.
Anki calls Vector a home robot which makes you think about Rosie from The Jetson’s, but Vector can’t really do that much.. It can do some very basic assistance stuff like Alexa, but Anki is spending way more time working on the robot’s personality than its utility.. You can think of him as an older brother for Cozmo, but definitely not Cozmo., Hey Vector., ( robot chimes ). I have a question. (, robot chirps ).
What’S the distance from San Francisco to Los Angeles, ( robot chimes ) [, Vector ]. The distance is approximately 347 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles. (. Both laugh, ), Hey, Vector., (, robot chimes ) Set a timer for 10 seconds. ( robot alarms, ) (, both laugh ) Every one of our products will be a character. It’Ll have a name it’ll be different personalities, because if you have a robot that helps you with something more functional, where he’s meant to do something in healthcare or security, or something like that. It’S a very different type of personality.
But it still has to be an interface, that’s actually very intuitive and very warm. [ Dieter ], A robotic personality could very quickly become very gimmicky, so Vector doesn’t actually talk too much it just sort of chirps and beeps like a little droid. Unless you specifically ask it a question., But, more importantly, its actions are designed to react to the environment, which makes it feel a little bit more alive.. We really placed close attention to have behaviors be based on either sensors or what the user is doing.. So that was a big piece for us, not just having a robot who is entertaining briefly, but something that felt very alive over the course of the day.. The thing that’s really different is that he has interactions that are physical and based on you hanging out with him.. So if you turn on music he’ll pick up, the exact beat he’ll start dancing to the beat right, Like that’s new.
Or if I pet him. He’Ll get really blissed out by it. ( robot, chirps, ), (, laughs, ) And then there’s things that we didn’t design that just happened.. So if you turn on the TV, he will watch that TV because he’s listening to the sound and then the screen triggers his motion detectors. So he gets really interested by different things.
[ Dieter ] Personality may go a long way, but is that really enough reason to buy a quote unquote: home robot When you think about kind of that stereotype of the humanoid robot, you end up going into a bad Place for two reasons. One: is you hit a price point that is totally impractical for the level of capability? That’S possible today and you end up pigeon holing yourself, because you end up trying to match the strengths and weaknesses of a human which don’t map perfectly to the strengths and weaknesses of robotics today.. And if you miss anything, you hit the uncanny value, which is basically creepy and unnatural.. By making a character, it is very humanistic in his qualities, but not trying to sound or look or feel like a human. You actually can better match your strengths and avoid your weaknesses..
You can set expectations. And you set expectations right, away. And so the fact that he’s still a cute little character. Means I don’t expect him to get me a beer which is the test for all robots right.
That’S exactly right. [, Dieter ], So Vector can’t bring you a cold one, but that doesn’t mean it’s not technologically advanced.. It basically has the guts of a smart phone inside it, including a faster processor and wifi, which means that it can always stay connected to the internet and doesn’t really need you to take care of it.. It can hang out on its own, find its own charger and not fall off the table.. It does a lot of that, with surprisingly advanced computer vision for such a tiny package.. So what you’re seeing here is a visualization of the robot and, as I turn him, he can feel it by virtue of that gyro I talked about so he knows he’s turning in space and you can also see he’s slowly building a map., So I’m gon na Manually drive him around., So you can see he can see his cube in 3D and, like I was saying before, that’s using the marker and if I move that around you can see it moves in 3D with him.. Now I’m gon na show him the cube in space.
[ Dieter ]. Oh, he sees it and he’s able to position it floating around in space. [ Andrew ]. He knows exactly where it is really down to the millimeter ,’cause. That’S what it takes for him to pick it up..
So is it able to place our faces in space as well on this map, Yeah seein’, your eyes, nose and mouth there, and if we introduce ourselves to him, he’ll eventually associate a name with each of these faces. You’re, the green lamp shade and I’m the blue Lamp shade. And we’re movin’ in space.
We’re movin’ in space, and you can see if I move closer, it will also move closer.. This thing can recognize faces. How are you doing facial recognition on a little tiny robot? What’S interesting is most people’s eyes are about the same distance apart. So that’s a known distance, which is all we really need. So by realizing how far apart my eyes are in the image I can tell how far away the face is roughly., But it lets him.
Remember where I am in space, which means that if he decides he’s gon na go pick up that cube and he turns around and drives over here. He remembers I’m here and that allows him to do something we call referencing, which is something kids also do right before they wan na. Do something they’ll often sort of look up at you make sure you’re watching them.. He can do that as well.
He can turn back and check me out and then go and pick up his cube and what’s powerful about that. Is it takes it from being an experience where you’re watching a robot pick up a cube to one where you’re sort of drawn into the experience and doing it with him or being involved., And he can tell if you’re making eye contact he can tell if we’re Looking at each other instead of him, so we can also use that information to drive his behaviors., Hey, Vector., (, robot, chirps, ), Fist, bump. (, robot, chirps ). He can tootle around drive around he’s sittin’ in his home right now..
I imagine I’m gon na put him on a counter sit on the floor. A coffee table like where does he live Yeah, so living room, coffee table kitchen table? We even have an accessory, that’s kind of like his habitat, and the key is that he’s always on. You should forget that there is an on/off switch he’ll charge himself, go back to his charger, he’ll be sleeping for part of the day, he’ll wake up when something interesting happens, and a lot of this is gon na, be the magic that builds out all of the Subtleties around him being alive. Anki is launching the Vector robot on Kickstarter today and when it ships in October, it’s gon na retail for about 250 bucks. But if you get this thing, don’t expect it to have the same utility as even a $ 50 Amazon Echo.. After all, this thing is only part digital assistant, it’s also part toy and part. I don’t know little cute robot pet thing., But what it actually is is a chance to experience what it’s like to have an autonomous robot in your house.. It turns out the main utility of the Vector.
Robot is something we don’t talk about very much in tech. It’S fun. Thanks so much for watching and I wan na know what would you do if you had a little tiny robot in your house.? Let me know in the comments and oh hey one more thing: we’re gon na be taking a little break.. I’Ve got jury duty, people have got vacations and we’ll be back sometime in September., And so I’m just gon na roll.
This on for a little bit longer. ,’Cause, that’s what I do. Goodbye. .