Vector the little robot

Vector. © Anki.

On Wednesday, Anki unveiled its new robot, Vector, which looks a lot like the adorable Cozmo. Just like Cozmo, Anki reminds us of a palm-sized WALL-E, but with far more features. Vector comes with a 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon, a wide-angle HD camera, an infrared laser for mapping and navigation, an array of four microphones to pinpoint the spatial origin of a sound, and touch sensors to know when you’re petting it, for example. While its voice capabilities are housed on the cloud, other capabilities, like person detection and recognition, are based on a convolutional neural network housed on its embedded processor. Vector can answer questions and take pictures on demand. It is available as of today on Kickstarter for a discounted price of US$200, but only in the U.S. It will be available in stores on October 12 for US$250.

⇨ IEEE Spectrum, “Anki’s Vector is a little AI-powered robot now on Kickstarter for $200.”