MEET JIBO
Jibo, the social robot from robot scientist Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, is still almost a year away from commercial availability but Breazeal and her team have finally moved onto a working prototype.
Jibo is a very different concept of a personal robot where the focus is on human engagement and bringing content, apps, services ‘to life’ beyond flat screens,” Breazeal tells us. “Most of robotics views robots as a labour technology rather than a technology for human engagement and empowerment around family.The Wi-Fi connected, Linux-based helper comes with a “core set” of six skills, for now. These include: assistant to help with reminders, messenger to help deliver messages to people in your family, cameraman, storyteller, companion and telepresence avatar. Developers can of course expand on these in the future, and each Jibo can be connected with others, as well as household devices. “You can coordinate with Jibo and friends/family wherever you are,” (Breazeal,2015)
Jibo takes what we’ve learned from smartphone and tablet experiences, specifically from voice interactions in systems like Google Now, and builds on it. It does much of what the software on your devices can already do—learn your preferences, predict your needs—but it does everything with more personality. And whether Jibo succeeds or fails depends a lot on how that personality jibes with the humans who have to live with it.
What’s scary about social robots—the human machine—is precisely what Breazeal argues is most human about them. This is the moment, she believes, historians will look back on and recognize as “the time when we appreciate that technology has to actually match how we experience and think and act and decide, so that we become more empowered. That’s the shift: the humanization of technology to serve human values.” It’s the same kind of slightly terrifying optimism that made people call Alan Turing and Steve Jobs crazy, back before anyone knew whether their ambitious machines would actually work.
|
Dr. Cynthia Breazeal Pioneer of Social Robotics and MIT Professor, JIBO Inc. brings her vision and deep expertise to the world. |
Robots are slowly invading human’s life, offering a wide range of services to improve our everyday life.
I would not mind having a robot as a cooking assistant since I have most of the time no motivation or ideas to make food when I’m coming back late at home.
When it concerns my social life, my opinion would be completely different. I would of course enjoy my robot reminding I have to go to the dentist next week, eventually suggest the shortest itinerary to avoid traffic but not telling me what to wear to go to the meeting.
To conclude, I think new technologies are becoming fundemental to our society, prodiving considerable gain of money and personal time.
Though, we must be careful and try not to be surrounded by machines too fast; the transition must be done step by step to avoid any bad scenario when a robtised product is availble for public use. The fear of Skynet is still here.
Yes, Margot robots are going to be invading our daily lifestyle all we need to do is just work together with them for better.