Living.Ai's Emo "Pet" Uses 1.2 TOPS of Neural Compute Performance to Liven Up Your Desk
Smart robot includes a range of sensors, facial recognition capabilities, and even a skateboard that can charge your smartphone.
Living.Ai is looking to brighten peoples' desks up with a "desktop pet" featuring built-in artificial intelligence capable of exhibiting personality: Emo.
"Built with multiple sensors and cutting-edge techs, Emo is a cool desktop AI robot pet with characters that can self-explore the world and react to you with 1000+ faces and movements," claims Living.Ai's Hongtao Zhang of the project. "Like a loyal companion, Emo cheers you up with music, dance movements, and online games! Emo is also a great helper that wakes you up, turns on the light, takes pictures and answers to your questions, for a truly life-like pet on your desktop!"
"Emo is curious and inquisitive about the world around him. He moves independently to explore his surroundings on his own. He tracks sounds, recognizes people (up to 10 people) and objects and expertly navigates your desktop without ever falling off. Emo makes decisions on his own and his personality evolves based on his surroundings and your interactions. If you try to interrupt what he is doing, he might even get a little annoyed."
Emo is built around an unspecified system-on-chip boasting a neural networking coprocessor capable of delivering up to 1.2 TOPS of compute performance. This is liked to a far-field quad-microphone array and a wide-angle front-facing camera as well as a range of sensors: A time-of-flight (TOF) laser distance sensor operating at up to 25cm, four optical drop sensors under the robot's feet, a six-axis gyroscope and accelerometer, a touch sensor, and a light sensor. A display panel on the front provides the robot's face.
While the primary purpose of Emo is for fun, Living.Ai looks to have thought about potential uses, too: A bundled "skateboard" accessory doubles as a wireless charging mat for your smartphone and a bundled smart light plugs into a socket and ties into the robot's alarm system, and Emo itself includes voice assistant functionality with Alexa and Google Assistant integration under test.
Emo is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter, with pricing set at $129 for early backers.