Daddy’s little helper… Anki Vector Robot is definitely more useful than most home robots
Anki Vector Robot
£249, anki.com
It’s not quite the same as the moment a toddler takes its first steps, or when your cat finally learns to not sit on your computer keyboard, but I felt a rush of paternal pride. ‘Hey Vector, roll your cube,’ I said, and the robot trundled across the floor and flipped a plastic cube over with its digger attachment.
‘What’s the weather?’ I said next, and its screen ‘eyes’ turned into storm clouds and it intoned, ‘Six degrees centigrade, and rainy.’
The Anki Vector Robot. You can command the Wi-Fi-connected robot to ‘Come here’ (it has face recognition), to take photos, and (oddly) to set kitchen timers
Anki’s Vector robot is pitched as ‘the most helpful thing in your home without a heartbeat’. While I wouldn’t swap it for, say, the shower, it’s definitely more useful than most ‘home’ robots. That’s not hard.
Robots always look fun, then it turns out you need a PhD in computer science to use them. But even idiots (and children) can control Vector.
There is an app, but you don’t need it. It even navigates its way back to its charging pad if it’s running low on power, which is the sort of self-sufficiency I admire
You can command the Wi-Fi-connected robot to ‘Come here’ (it has face recognition), to take photos, and (oddly) to set kitchen timers. There is an app, but you don’t need it. It even navigates its way back to its charging pad if it’s running low on power, which is the sort of self-sufficiency I admire.
Amazon is rumoured to be working on an Alexa robot – so this might be a taste of the future. The only problem is it’s not really a toy (it’s £250) – and it’s not quite useful enough for me to fool my wife into thinking it’s a household essential…