Robot "Kuri" which added autonomous driving function and charm to home assistants such as Amazon Echo and Google Home

Amazon's "Amazon Echo"Google's"Google HomeHome robots like the addition of freely movable legs and rich personality and lovable character "Kuri"is.

Kuri the robot could replace your little brother as the cutest member of your family - The Verge
http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/1/3/14128376/kuri-robot-home-release-mayfield-robotics

Home robot Kuri is like an Amazon Echo designed by Pixar | TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/03/home-robot-kuri-is-like-an-amazon-echo-designed-by-pixar/

Amazon's "Amazon Echo" and Google's "Google Home" are home assistants with speech recognition features that will play music and answer questions simply by talking to you, but startup Mayfield Robotics announced "Kuri "Has different characteristics from these. That feature seems to be a personality expression with big eyes and standing behaviors created by emphasizing "personality of robot" in the design process. The person who worked as an animator in Pixar for a long time designed the operation of Kuri, Mayfield Robotics of the developer seems to have considerable confidence in the affection like Kuri's pet.

The body of Kuri


It is a home robot that can also express expressions by moving parts of eyes.


The back is like this.


When put in the house this feeling of size.


With speech recognition function, besidesIFTTTWas usedIoTRemote operation is also possible. In addition, Kuri can automatically return to the charging station when the battery is about to run out.

Charging station and Kuri


When you use such Kuri you will find out what kind of feeling it will be if you see the following movie.

Life with Kuri: End of Day - YouTube


Kuri is able to move around the house with a wheel attached to the bottom of the main unit, so that it can become a partner of the user and play various kinds of action such as playing music. It is hard to cooperate with Spotify of streaming service, Apple Music, etc. at the time when Kuri is released soon, but the overseas media The Verge points out, but since Kuri has a speaker, wireless speaker It is possible to use it like.

In order to accurately recognize the inside of the user's house, Kuri uses a laser to map inside the house. In addition, 1080p camera is mounted in the eye part, it is possible to move around avoiding obstacles while recognizing objects in the house. The following movie is an image of Kuri's usage scene, and it is seen that Kuri moves naturally avoiding obstacles.

Life with Kuri: Let's Play - YouTube


Also, when the user touches, Kuri reacts as if it were alive. A reporter in The Verge who actually saw Kuri's demonstration said, "When I touch it Kuri looked up at me and said it was casually irrelevant." In addition to calling "Hey, Kuri", Kuri starts up, and since face recognition software is loaded, it is possible to recognize the face of a registered person, and by using the face authentication function, a suspicious individual It is also possible to patrol or move Kuri from a smartphone application like a radio control. However, it seems that some functions did not work well during the demonstration stage.


The most interesting part of such Kuri seems to be that it does not have the liquid crystal screen which ordinary robot possesses. About this, Mr. Chris Matthew of Mayfield Robotics says "It was not intentionally lost the screen". If the eyes are expressed only by the liquid crystal screen, the eyes become black when the battery runs out or stops the operation, it stops like the robot like everything, and the character nature of the great Kuri is lost I will. Therefore, it seems that the screen was not designed to make use of the personality of Kuri. Matthew talks about the intention of the design, "Home robots should be able to feel the intimacy of pets and friends rather than iPads and other gadgets."

The release of Kuri will be around the end of 2017, the price is 699 dollars (about 82,000 yen). Preorder is starting from the following official website.

Kuri, The Home Robot That Just Might Change Your Life
https://www.heykuri.com/