Panasonic to Start Mass Production of Its Nicobo Robot in 2023
2 min readNext a thriving crowdfunding marketing campaign last year, Panasonic, a buyer electronics enterprise, determined to start its Nicobo companion robotic to a broader audience and declared that it will place it on the marketplace in 2023. The robotic was developed in affiliation with the Toyohashi College of Technologies Michio Oka Laboratory researchers and released a yr back in a confined version.
In 2021, the business bought 320 companion robots for somewhere around $360 every single in considerably less than seven hours as component of its crowdfunding campaign, and now Panasonic is organizing a wider launch. Immediately after the initially six months, on the other hand, those people who have been lucky to pre-buy Nicobo necessary to shell out all-around $10/thirty day period to join the robotic to their smartphone and acquire program updates.
Nicobo is a smaller ball-shaped cat-like robot about 20 cm in diameter that cannot do significantly, but it can change all over, wag its tail, blink its eyes, and alter its facial expressions in reaction to human actions. The companion robot can figure out faces using a digital camera and hear and respond to your voice applying its built-in multidirectional microphones. Nicobo also options contact sensors that make it conscious when you might be touching or hugging it.
It cannot genuinely chat like a voice assistant or assist a dialogue, but it can make many sounds that imitate speech and repeat individual terms.
The robotic is created to be a companion for lonely folks or a very low-upkeep pet for the elderly.
The pricing and launch date of Nicobo are however to be verified, but Panasonic intends to make it cheaper than other identical methods. The company also plans to convert its companion robotic into a source of lasting money by including a subscription with a new Nicobo, which will let its entrepreneurs retail outlet their conversations with the robot as very well as their facial information in the cloud.