Gadgetory

we're here at Augie to check out their new Cosmo a fun and highly interactive little robot that functions both as a toy and a pet heard that before and been disappointed I think you'll be pleasantly surprised this time as they didn't just use a team of highly skilled engineers but they also worked with people that used to work at DreamWorks and Pixar to do the animations and game design this creates a dynamic combination of artificial intelligence interactive content animatronics along with vision and sensing technologies that create not just an awesome robot but a personality or a character now let's go meet Cosmo this is Cosmo and he's not perfect but he isn't intended to be he's designed after AI flawed but lovable little hero r2d2 and bb-8 aren't the most advanced droids in the Star Wars universe but you love them because they have character like Cosmo Cosmo can detect who you are and greet you like this and he has emotions like confidence excitement happiness bravery and more sometimes he will fail and he will complain about that or you'll be playing a game with him and he will respond happily or sadly depending on if he is winning or losing he gets surprised when he encounters new people or objects or even the ever dreaded a table ledge he feels real it's kind of like playing with a dog sure playing the game like drawing a stick or ball is somewhat entertaining but the really fun part is interacting with the dog the best part of Cosmo is well interacting with Cosmo and the games are mostly a facilitator for that although I must say I did get a little competitive with the quick tap games as you're just screwing around or completing daily goals you will earn bits to upgrade Cosmo or unlock new games and by the way you'll never have to pay for these with real money just easily acquirable in-game currency and there should be a lot of them as the Anki team claims they have a multi-year roadmap for future upgrades and along with that you also get sparks which are kind of like dog treats they can be used to prompt Cosmo to show off and do a little trick but as we were saying before sometimes Cosmo will fail at these tasks that you have given him instead of acting like you might expect a robot to act by just repeatedly trying over and over again Cosmo will get sad and lose confidence resulting in him possibly trying the task in a different way or maybe even switching tasks altogether yet again making him feel more real say he screws up big time and fails to recognize a table ledge causing him to fall off first off he's rather durable and should be fine secondly however he will express major displeasure he will lack bravery and confidence for a while just like a non robotic being on the flip side when Cosmo is excitedly doing fun things and succeeding he will check in with you from time to time making eye contact calling your name just like a happy kid would and he'll go around and do a bunch of different things lots of what gives Cosmo this great personality is subtle as it should be the emotional algorithms huge library of animations dynamic interaction incredibly awesome eyes if you haven't noticed and even a soundtrack they aren't necessarily things you would actively think about but together they make a wonderful experience now let's look more in depth at what's happening under the hood most of the computational power for Cosmo including AI computer vision etc is done through your phone meaning you need to be connected at all times to cosmos Wi-Fi network so just as a note this does mean you won't be connected to the internet on your phone while this does sort of suck to be honest this is good for another reason which is very possibly more important to you you're always offline meaning that no pictures or video are taken no voice is recorded your private conversations with Cosmo or things that he sees and hears are yours and don't go anywhere else this also means that as your phone becomes better Cosmo can - with various software upgrades you can enhance Kosmos activities behaviors and interactions Anke has a multi-year roadmap as we mentioned earlier for future upgrades but if you want to make your own or were I on other people's creations they offer an extensive Python SDK with great documentation available at developer on comm robotics programming has a crazy learning curve computer vision path planning 3d world modeling all these things are highly difficult and this API can make them easy with simple imports and function calls and if you're more interested in the artsy animation side of things however do not fear there will be a Maya animation kit with JSON output available later on now cosmo is made up of 320 individual components and it took 45 entire mechanical iterations to achieve his final form in the end for computer vision they ended up with a forward facing camera and a cliff sensor the cliff sensor is on the bottom of cosmo and will mainly be used to keep him from falling off of tables the camera is used to detect faces and familiar objects with QR code style identifiable images on them having a standard size for these images enables cosmo to detect how far away they are and if they're on an angle which is great but for things he doesn't know about he can use the camera to map them into his environment so he knows to stay away lest he bump into them a lot of this tech is in place to avoid what is called robot kidnapping or the idea of picking up cosmo and putting him somewhere else screwing up his carefully constructed map he will then be able to find objects that he is used to seeing like one of the boxes that has a QR code on it map its position in the space and then try to figure out where he's at it's a smart little way to make him not be constantly constantly confused while you're interacting with him now put all of that together into a cute little robot along with all the things I mentioned earlier and you've got a gifted little guy with a huge amount of tricks under his sleeve he's mischievous and a lot of fun and I'm excited to check them out when they start shipping to Canada and other places outside the US if you are to go to a key calm slash Cosmo