consumer robotics

Apparently I wasn't paying attention last summer when an MIT-spawned startup crowdfunded Jibo, hyped (pardon me, promoted) as an intelligent personal assistant. Apparently the entrepreneurs blew past their initial funding goal in about twenty-five minutes, and had arrived at a sum close to the GDP of Luxembourg by the time they pulled the plug on pre-orders.

Strikes me that a wireless-enabled mobile unit (this one is stationary) with a Siri-like voice interface (the heavy interpretive processing being handed off to a remote server farm at need) could be useful, but the more I read about this one, the more my bullshit detector chimes, and I remember this, from the guy who back in the Bronze Age gave us Pong (yay!) and Chuck E. Cheese (go to hell. Go directly to hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect good karma). He lost his shirt on the linked project, and deservedly so.

Still, although this thing appears to intimate (cleverly avoiding actual promises) much more than it's likely to deliver, Jibo looks like an interesting poof (sic)-of-concept.

BTW, might it be appropriate to create a dedicated forum for "Consumer AI/Robotics?"

cordlessly,

This may somewhat exceed your target price-range, but that can't be helped. 'Want' has nothing to do with such silly matters:

[short list]
Audrey, of course for The Voice; if I am to hear it on every triviality of the day, it must be mellifluous and evocative of a (temporarily-Living) singing Charmer, speaking-as-if-music. Even about the weather.
(If speaking as/re some Cheney-like creature: she may improvise. Hideously, if apropos.)

The Paranoia plug-in must have an external, mechanical OFF-switch.
In conversation She may allude to a Black Shadow in context of some Hunter S. quote like, "Never create anything, it will be misinterpreted, it will chain you and follow you for the rest of your life.”
But not about riding one (unless perforce her automaton-replacement has done so: preferably á lá the late Rollie Free, at Bonneville, flat-out prone in swim-trunks. (He was a bit elderly for that gig; the record stood many years.) Geezer-power! suck it up, kiddies.
[/short]

[long]
Pygmalion, realistic as Data (Spiner was.. perfection, I thought, considering how easily that character could have been over- or underdone.)
Why Not? be interacting with a hologram instead of the exact shape of the 'Beam ON' light of a particle accelerator?

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