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Meet Kuri, Another Friendly Robot for Your Home
Mayfield Robotics set out to build an approachable robot on wheels for surveillance and entertainment. Will anyone buy it?
Inside the Silicon Valley office of Mayfield Robotics, Kuri looks up at me and squints as if in a smile. Then the robot rolls across the floor, emitting a few R2-D2-like beeps.
Mayfield Robotics, which spun out of the research branch of Bosch, built Kuri as the next step in home robotics. It joins an increasingly crowded field: joining smart-home devices like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home are wheeled robots like Jibo, Pepper, and Buddy, ready to offer companionship and entertainment (see “Personal Robots: Artificial Friends with Limited Benefits”).
Kaijen Hsiao, CTO of Mayfield Robotics, says Kuri was built to focus on doing a few things very well, and its personality will be what sets it apart. The 20-inch-tall robot is essentially an Amazon Alexa on wheels, letting users play music or control their smart devices from anywhere in the home. It can also live-stream video of your home for surveillance purposes.
Kuri is currently available for pre-order for $699 and is expected to ship to buyers by the end of the year. Mayfield is beginning to manufacture the robot now but will spend the year fleshing out the software side.
While people are at home, Kuri’s mission is to provide entertainment, whether that’s playing music or a podcast or reading a story out loud. It can autonomously follow users from room to room as it performs these tasks. Through a website called IFTTT, users can also set up custom commands for specific actions.
Kuri promises to keep working for you when you’re not home, too. Behind one of Kuri’s eyes is a 1080p camera, and users can access a live stream from the Kuri app. The video function can be used to check on a pet or make sure no intruders are present. Microphones embedded in the robot can detect unusual sounds, prompting the robot to roll in that direction and investigate. Or users can remotely pilot the robot to a specific area. The company says Kuri has “hours of battery life” and drives itself to its dock when it needs to charge.
Mayfield built this robot to perform all these tasks with personality. Kuri comes across as lovable but simple, so there’s no reason to expect it to do more than simple jobs. “He talks robot. He talks in bleeps and bloops,” Hsiao says. “It makes him endearing, but it also sets expectations appropriately.”
But will that be enough to make people want Kuri? In 2017, there will be a range of home robots that use artificial personality, says Andra Keay, the founder of Robot Launchpad and managing director of Silicon Valley Robotics.
“However, I believe that there is going to be a limit to the number of personalities we will want to have in our houses,” Keay says. “So the race is on to create not just engagement but loyalty. That’s a real challenge.”
Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603303/meet-kuri-another-friendly-robot-for-your-home/
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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