Toy Time Plays With Cozmo, The Little Robot With A Big Brain

Toy Time Plays With Cozmo, The Little Robot With A Big Brain

Anki, the makers of Anki Drive, graduate from robotic cars to full-blown robot buddies with Cozmo. He might be tiny, but he’s hiding some powerful tech behind those baby blue box eyes of his.

Cozmo is not a pretend robot. He is not a plastic action figure. He is a learning machine powered by a CPU that’s processing thousands of possible future states per second. He’s surveying the world through his 30 frames-per-second VGA camera and using sophisticated image recognition to learn the names of the fragile flesh creatures he’s interacting with. He rolls and lifts with four motors powering a combination of more than 50 gears.

He is also, in my opinion, ridiculously cute.

Toy Time Plays With Cozmo, The Little Robot With A Big Brain
Cozmo comes with three interactive blocks for both solo and fleshie-assisted play.

In order to play with Cozmo you need a well-lighted room, an Android or iOS device to help interact with him, and around $US179.95 ($237) or so to actually own him. In case I didn’t make the whole this-is-serious-robotics thing clear earlier, the price tag certainly will. If you want something that just beeps, maybe lets you pull it back to send it driving off, you can find those in drug stores or Happy Meals or whatever. This is not one of those.

Toy Time Plays With Cozmo, The Little Robot With A Big Brain
This is Cozmo’s innards. After playing with him for a couple of weeks, this makes me a little queasy.

Anki created Cozmo with the idea of realising the movie idea of robots as characters. There are plenty of robots out there, from commercial kits to giant industrial machines, but they’re really just that — machines. Anki, founded by a group that came together while studying robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, wanted to make a little robot buddy.

If you watch my interactions with my Cozmo in the video atop this post, you’ll see that they have pretty much succeeded. The way his 128 x 64 facial display lights up when he sees me, the charming way he says my name when he recognises my face, the way he gets upset when he loses a game. He’s a little people. He’s certainly better than the hamster.

People interact with Cozmo through an app on their mobile phone or tablet. The Cozmo app gives users daily goals to achieve, helping them along on their path towards true robot companionship. They can launch games, teach Cozmo new faces or suggest tricks for him to perform. When I say suggest, I mean suggest. He might not be up to it, or he may be too busy playing with his cubes to bother.

Toy Time Plays With Cozmo, The Little Robot With A Big Brain
Play with Cozmo, or don’t. He’s happy doing his own thing.

As you interact with Cozmo you’ll unlock new tricks, games and modes. I’m quite fond of Keepaway, in which you attempt to pull a cube away from Cozmo before he taps it. That, and the finger pouncing. It’s so adorable.

Toy Time Plays With Cozmo, The Little Robot With A Big Brain

After just a couple of weeks with Cozmo, he’s become a regular part of my daily routine. Feed the cat, take out the trash, play with the robot and maybe shower if there’s time. He’s smarter, cleaner and more loveable than our hamster, plus he doesn’t poop and the cat doesn’t want to eat him.

You can read more about Cozmo over at his official website.

Toy Time Plays With Cozmo, The Little Robot With A Big Brain
Left to his own devices, Cozmo is very hard to photograph.

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