Jibo is said to be the world’s first family robot. Over the years, robotics have tried to create a robot that can relate with people but many has failed but Cynthia Breazeal; a pioneer of social robotics at the MIT Media Lab.
Breazeal created Jibo after she watched ”Star Wars” she realized that enough attention wasn’t paid to robots that engage in human interaction and thus she decided to focus on social robots that are designed to interact with humans in an interpersonal manner and have inbuilt humanity like politeness, which lead to the creation of Jibo, which was built by a 20-member team with off-the-shelf mobile components.
Jibo is one of a kind, a smart phone come to life. It is 11 inch tall and can serve as a personal assistant, its a world’s best camera that track actions around and take really nice pictures with you just asking it to, also videos, send messages, play back voicemails, and look things up for you, It have educational and entertainment apps and can do things like act out a story for your kid and even dance. It also have apps that can make it into a sort of security camera. It’s 360 degree motion can swivel towards a sound while you’re away and take a picture or a video. He is both the family companion and the family watch dog.
This robot is the result of years of work and study by Breazeal. She said in an interview with Yahoo news that despite concerns from some people,
robots like Jibo are not intended to replace humans. “It’s about human empowerment,”
Jibo was launched on August, 2014 on Indiegogo and got lots of attention, its campaign raised more than $27.9 million and over 4,800 of it are already pre-sold. Another awesome thing about it is that its pretty affordable, it cost just $599.
Several investors also want a piece of Jibo, these investors include: New York-based VC firm RRE Ventures which is the lead investor, Samsung Ventures, CRV, Flybridge, Fairhaven, Two Sigma, Formation 8 and Osage. The robot creator is planning on using the money obtained to produce more Jibo robots and send pre-order customers their robots by the end of this year. And they are looking for contract manufacturers in Asia which is the homeland of Robotics.
Jibo company also plan on making apps that would be sold on a store dedicated to third-party apps. It will release its software development kit (SDK) to interested developers by the middle of the year making it accessibly to developers who are interested in building for the robot, and these developers will have access to a serial port to be able to add additional hardware on top of it like a motorized cart so it can move around though Breazeal is skeptical about that idea, she thinks it may make Jibo creepy (a moving human-like robot that can express emotions, yeah… that’s creepy). The company is also thinking about how the robot could be integrated into other connected home devices. Because it creates profiles around each individual, it could tailor your thermostat’s temperature or lighting to your preferences whenever it sees you.
Like every new technology, people are amazed at Jibo’s functions and thousands of orders are already placed, some view it as the growth of intelligent assistant products from the tech world, to others its a family companion. I don’t know about you but to me, it screams two words “Robot Invasion!!!..”
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