A few years back, robots weren’t very much a part of the crowdfunding world. Those that were being pushed simply weren’t ready for what people expect of them. Fast forward to now, and there are still a set of companies trying to push that vision of an autonomous robot that can help around the house — a robot like AMY.
In many respects, AMY is set up as a standard home robot, capable of getting around by itself to offer news, calendar reminders, and alerts to the entire family. Its Wi-Fi connectivity lets it use a built-in HD video camera to facilitate video calls, lets users control connected devices in the home using voice control, and lets users ask it questions about the weather, for instance. (There’s no mention of the types of questions users can ask.)
For now, AMY only supports Android devices, but to what end isn’t exactly mentioned. A hefty $1999 gets backers the version of AMY with autonomous navigation and self-charging capabilities by October 2016. The flexible Indiegogo campaign is looking for $10,000 by June 27th, 2016.
The need for robots like Aijia Pro and EMotion that move around the home autonomously simply aren’t necessary. The combination of Amazon’s ever-learning Echo along with the fact that everyone has a smartphone capable of video-chatting, alerts, and reminders really makes products like AMY just extravagances. There’s so much a robot like this is expected to do and this is not it.