This Robot Is the Furby of the Future
If you’re a ’90s kid, chances are you remember Furbies. How could you forget the cute-yet-kinda-creepy robotic toy that was all the rage? At the time, Furbies were so futuristic, they even got banned from the White House for fear they would repeat sensitive material to the wrong parties. While Furbies may be a thing of the past, a new robot company is bringing interactive robots to the future. Machine learning and natural language company AKA has introduced Musio, an Artificially Intelligent (AI) robot that becomes smarter as you interact with it. Unlike its predecessor, Musio can think on its own, all the while growing and adapting with the user. Musio can actually hear you, know you and understand you.
Musio can carry on a normal conversation, even cracking some bad jokes for your entertainment. The current Musio prototype follows a script when having a conversation, though it’s mainly one-sided at this point. Further research and engineering will have Musio fully interactive by the time the product launches. With their Indiegogo goal achieved and surpassed, that should be no problem.
The robot comes in three different styles, or “brains”: Simple, Smart and Genius. The simple model remembers up to five conversations, but cannot be Internet enabled or connect to other devices, plus it has a smaller battery. The Genius boasts much more memory, a bigger battery, a faster processor and faster recognition and reaction speeds.
With such advanced capabilities, this new friend is bound to make imaginary ones obsolete.
Will you be buying one of these robots? Share why or why not in the comments below.
(Photos via AKA and Musio Indiegogo)
