It feels like Alexa is basically everywhere at this point. We just learned that there have been more than 100 million Alexa-powered devices sold worldwide, and now there’s one more product getting in on Amazon’s popular voice assistant. It was announced at CES 2019 that Temi, a robotic butler that can follow you around your house, will now offer Alexa support.
Even without Alexa, Temi is something like a personal assistant. The three-foot-tall wheeled robot is designed to navigate its way around your house and help you out with your daily tasks by providing you with information and keeping your hands free. Temi’s head is a 10.1-inch Android tablet that is used to display information and run apps like Google, Reddit, YouTube, CNN, Yelp, Deezer, and Uber.
Now with Alexa integration added, Temi can serve as a sort of version of the Echo Show but with wheels. (If you’re unfamiliar, the Echo Show is a variant of the company’s line of smart speakers that comes with a touchscreen display that can show on-screen information or act as a webcam to make video calls from.) In fact, Temi creator Robotemi said that it plans to create a very similar experience to the Echo Show once an Alexa Smart Screen development kit is released. According to the company, Temi will be the very first robot device to feature Alexa, and the company is hoping that support will help to redefine how we imagine interacting with personal assistants.
“The collaboration with Amazon is a major step up for Temi — the Alexa Smart Screen and TV Device SDK will enrich Temi with numerous skills, the world’s best natural language processing engine and more, which will take Temi to a new level of interactivity, usability, and familiarity,” Yossi Wolf, CEO of Robotemi, said in a statement.
According to the creators of Temi, the robot has already been mass produced and will start being delivered to customers in March of this year. If you want to get your hands on the robot so that you will be able to speak with Alexa anywhere in your house, you can get one for $1,500.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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With AI progressing so fast, it's only a matter of time before we start getting AI companions like the ones we used to see in movies like R2-D2, Wall-E, or Baymax. Now, Singapore-based OKA Technology has unveiled Mori, a cute little AI companion that looks less like a conventional home robot and more like someone turned the Pokémon Foongus into a table lamp.
Mori isn't meant to clean your house or control your smart home, but to serve as what OKA calls a "Nature Companion." It uses subtle movements, warm lighting, nature-inspired sounds, and small reactions to make its presence around the house feel calming rather than distracting. Mori can sit quietly while you read, sway along to music, welcome you when you enter a room, or encourage you to slow down for a moment without requiring a screen or a conversation.
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