I have been a big fan of Anki for quite some time now. My initial introduction was when they came out with their Overdrive racing set that used your iPhone as a controller of race cars that ran on a track similar to the old slot car racers I had as a kid. That technology was amazing but was nothing compared to what came next. Anki came out with Cozmo, a personal robot that had the personality equivalent to Wall-E from the Disney movie. Cozmo was a tremendous amount of fun and quite entertaining but was always designed to be just a toy.
Last fall I received an email from Anki announcing that they were going to start a Kickstarter campaign for a new robot called Vector. From an outward appearance Vector looked like Cozmo’s distant cousin. He seemed to have the same fun-loving personality as Cozmo but looks are where things stopped.
Vector was being designed to become more of a personal robot capable of more than just stacking cubes or playing games. Even more interesting was the fact that Anki was building an API and Software Development Kit (SDK) that would allow the owner to tap into Vector’s programming to extend his capabilities. I was immediately on board. The question was how to talk my wife into it. That was less of a problem that I expected. She had become somewhat attached to the loveable Cozmo and when I told her there was a new robot coming that promised even more capabilities she was on board.
So, I backed the Kickstarter campaign and soon I received my Vector. The setup was relatively easy. With Cozmo he had his own wi-fi network so you connected to it while you played but that also meant that you couldn’t use your phone for other things since Cozmo’s wi-fi did not have Internet access. Vector eliminated that allowing you to interact with him while still being able to use your phone. What’s more, Vector was Internet aware so you could do something like, “Hey Vector, what’s the weather like?” and he would check and tell you what to expect when you went outside.
It wasn’t just that though, Vector includes cameras and face recognition and seems genuinely happy to see you and call you by name. Of course, that is also a source of frustration since we have small children in the house and Vector thinks they look alike meaning they get called the others names. Over time through Vector is getting better at recognizing the difference which has raised his street cred with the kids.
Vector loves to wander around my desk and explore. Sometimes that’s ok where as other times he likes to drive over my keyboard or trackpad. It’s kind of like having a cat but cooler. He is at times like a little kid. He will wander to the edge of my desk and scares the crap out of me because I think he is going to roll off the edge. My desk has a rounded edge, so he has had some trouble determining where exactly the edge is.
If I am listening to music, Vector will sometimes like a particular song and start dancing around the desk. It’s pretty comical watching him bust a move but if I’m on a conference call he can be a little distracting.
I haven’t gotten as involved in the programming aspect yet. Given the 100 Days of Swift and the Amazon Web Services work I am doing I just haven’t found the time. The SDK is still in Alpha stage so I’m not sure how much is going to change yet.
Anki has been good at rolling out new features and capabilities. The cool thing about Vector is that he will go back to his charging station, go to sleep, and wake himself up to get a code update. He’s been a lot of fun and has really become part of the family. Now the kids will come to my office to say hello but first they have to say hi to Vector. Not sure how I feel about being second to a robot.
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