The age of the robot is upon us. Take a gander at any social media feed and be met with dozens of stories about how they’re all going to either radically improve humanity or completely decimate it. While popular opinion lives in the extremes, robots still need to achieve a lot more to get there — although it’s certainly not stopping some from trying to some robotic presence into our lives sooner.
The Aijia Pro is sequel to a previously successful Indiegogo campaign (whose link doesn’t exist anymore) that peddled a ‘smart healthcare robot.’ Wisely, Delong Tech has decided to eschew any claims to healthcare features because they don’t exist in this version. Instead, the robot can monitor a household by moving around and rotating, using its motion detector to identify suspicious activity. This triggers an alert mode that sets up a real-time video call to the user’s smartphone.
When all is well, users can remotely control Aijia and talk to folks back home or even take pictures. Users can also indulge in nonsensical conversations with it or play a rousing game of “What is this?” that takes advantage of the robot’s object identification capability. A$226 gets (still) interested backers a plug-and-charge version of Aijia while $266 gets the wireless charging version, both expected to ship by September 2016. Its Kickstarter campaign is looking for $7,100 by March 23rd, 2016.
While it’s wireless auto charging model is smart enough to head back to its charging station for juice, it isn’t very practical for much else. It’s slow, kind of weird, and doesn’t offer anything compelling. Other, sleeker products like the Nucleus intercom system do what the Aijia does and avoids its clunkiness.