We all have robot brains in our pockets. I know it sounds creepy, but it;s a fact that might actually bring robots in to your home in the cutest way possible. Romotive, a robotics company that in an April CNN interview called this decade the perfect time for robots, has put its money where its mouth (or perhaps handset) is.
Romo is Romotive’s new consumer-grade robot and it has a lot of things going for it that make it more attractive than a Roomba, more useful than a Furby and less threatening than a Terminator. It uses an iPhone as a brain, face, and eyes, relying on now ubiquitous smartphone technology to provide charming and clever functionality.
There are three reasons why this might just be the little robot that makes every nerd’s childhood dreams of having a pet robot come true. The first is as obvious as it is massively important: cost. Because Romo relies on the processing power, hardware peripherals and Wi-Fi connection provided by an already owned smartphone, manufacturing costs are practically nothing in comparison to what a similar robot would to build. According to a TED Talk presented by Romotive CEO Keller Rinaudo, Romo can be manufactured for one percent of the cost that other robots of its size and functionality, coming in at $150.
Number two on the list of why Romo stands to populate households with its little treads and animated face is because it follows a very important rule: it avoids falling into the uncanny valley. Essentially, humans instinctively dislike and distrust things that look and act like us but obviously aren’t. It’s why those Robert Zumeckis motion capture movies are scary instead of whimsical, and it’s why robot butlers will never catch on.
Romo has a face, it sneezes, it yawns, it smiles, but it is an animated face that takes up the full screen of the phone-brain. The rest of it is a mobility platform. To call it human-like would be simply incorrect. It’s more of a charismatic cartoon insect, and because of this it will be embraced like a pet dog and not shunned like a terrifying plastic child.
Finally, Romo’s third key to success lies in nostalgia. Robots have been all over the world for many years now, disappointing lonely children everywhere who just want a robo-buddy to play with. And that’s the key really. If you need to be convinced that Romo has what it takes to be incredibly popular, you simply need to see how easy and accessible it is in use.
During the TED demonstration, Rinaudo picked an audience member to control the Romo he had on stage with an iPad. There was no trouble there. More impressively though is what Rinaudo had to say about the robot’s connectivity. It doesn’t just act as a mobile remote camera, he says that the real magic can happen with long distance control, giving the example of a grandparent playing hide and seek with her grandchild by piloting the Romo from anywhere else with a reliable Internet connection.
Romo was build out of a reaction to the disappointment its creators had felt with the lack of presence robots had in our everyday lives. With the low costs and flexible functionality and by taking advantage of smartphone popularity, it looks like Romotive might just ensure that lack of excitement disappears in the very near future.
