This robot just wants to help
Forget about robot friends. Robit wants to be your robot servant.
The new bot from the eponymous Robit officially launched its Indiegogo campaign on Wednesday, hoping to generate enough interest for a Holiday 2016 launch.
With its Jack Skellington-esque face, squat body and two big wheels (it has a tiny caster wheel in the back), the 13-inch tall, 3-pound Robit looks cute enough to be your friend, but company CEO Shlomo Schwarcz told me that’s not the intention.
Image: Mashable, Brittany Herbert
When he and his brother, Elazar, starting asking people what they really wanted in a home robot, virtual everyone talked about it handling household tasks like the dishes and folding laundry. Robit can do neither of those things, but those wishes helped inform the kind of robot they ultimately built. “We made [a robot] that is very functional, that can actually help you,” Shlomo Schwarcz said.
Robit’s task-driven, Android interface runs on apps, apps that define a largely discrete set of actions that can be daisy chained together. So instead of using the robot’s voice recognition (which was not functional on the prototype I saw) to give it commands, you simply drop a series of app actions into a sort of dropbox interface.
Image: Mashable, Brittany Herbert
For example, Schwarcz is already using Robit at home to control his cat. The robot uses its HD camera eyes to find an objects it’s been trained on, in this case a cat and a couch, and then follows app instructions that tell it to watch for when the cat gets too close to the couch (the cat loves to scratch the couch arms). When that happens Robit plays loud music, which is stored on its 16 GB of internal memory, to scare off the cat.
Schwarcz told me that, unlike toy robots, Robit has a full-blown computer inside of it, which is based on the low-cost Raspberry PI 2 system. It’s also a completely open system; Robit will produce an SDK and API so people can write new apps for the robot and, if they want, run commands and control Robit from their PC. Schwarcz did this during our demo.
Image: Mashable, Brittany Herbert
Robit stays connected via Wi-Fi in the home. At any time, you can launch the app and see what Robit is seeing. The robot is equipped with a pair of ultrasonic sensors on the front as well as a gyroscope and accelerometer. While it did not appear to have edge detection to, say, avoid rolling down a flight of stairs, Robit can autonomously roam the home.
Schwarcz showed me how it could be trained to seen an object, like a key chain, and then be commanded to find it in the home. When it does, Robit takes a picture of the object and delivers it back to the app.
Robit can also act as a home sentry. Schwarcz set up the robot to detect anyone walking into the room. Robit’s small head and blue eyes trained on Schwarcz as he moved in front of it. Then Robit spoke in a deep, male voice, "Hello visitor, please look into my eyes so I can take your picture." It seemed like enough to scare off any would-be intruder. The picture it took was immediately delivered to the app.
Image: Mashable, Brittany Herbert
I noticed that the robot was fast and responsive, but that it also emitted a low-level hum during operation, a kink I hope Robit works out before ship.
The all-white robot is also somewhat extensible. There will be a variety of accessories including a carrying tray, gas and smoke detectors and even a tiny little missile launcher, which seems like an odd choice for something not intended to be a toy.
Robit will sell for $349 and, if it makes its Christmas ship date, Schwarcz hopes he and his brother have created the right mix of friendly and utility to “make people bring robots into the house.”
