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Anki's New Robot Has Animated Features
April 12, 2023 By Raulf Hernes
(Image Credit Google)
Anki's most notable final contribution to consumer robotics is the successful integration of animation features into a physical robot.Employing a group of former animators from Pixar and DreamWorks allowed the firm to make full use of how expressively the characters' eyes, sounds, and movements can be.For the aforementioned reasons, people were unsurprisingly quick to refer to Cosmo as "real like WALL-E." Anki ultimately failed as a result of wider market pressures. However, the company's history is meaningfully preserved by later entrants into the home robots market, most notably Amazon's Astro.The business sacrifices the modular buildability of ClickBot for some incredibly amazing maneuvers with Loona.The robot is equipped with a variety of sensors that enable it to interact with people by recognizing faces, movements, bodies, objects, gestures, voices, and "emotions." Additionally, it has edge detection and trajectory planning built-in for improved navigation so that it won't drive off the counter. The business intends to deliver the initial batch to backers in time for the holidays, which is appropriate.The tiny wheeled robot has a very similar form factor to Cozmo and was launched on Kickstarter today. It quickly exceeded its $20,000 goal. However, its movements are some of the smoothest ever made by a consumer robot.The cost of the bot, which retails for $449, is not even close to that of Astro. Early backers, though, will be able to purchase one for between $269 and $299, which is closer to Anki's price. Naturally, all of the typical risks associated with crowdfunding apply.