The artificial intelligence robot Cozmo from Anki has the potential to boost a robotics revolution among the masses.
The Verge reports that Anki's small artificial intelligence (AI) robot, Cozmo, is based on advanced engineering and ingenious software. Every action of the robot conceals tens of thousands of lines of code.
When the Anki will launch the Cozmo AI robot this October, the company hopes that consumers won't think of its product as just a toy or undecipherable technology. Instead, Anki wants people to wonder what's going on under the tiny robot's hood - and, eventually, to feel compelled to alter it themselves. For this reason, the company provides the software powering the AI robot as an open source app.
According to Hanns Tappeiner, Anki's co-founder and president, the company provides the tools consumers can use to accomplish that feat. The Cozmo software development kit (SDK) can boot up via an iPad mini plugged into a laptop and users can start sending instructions to the robot.
The SDK allows users set speed and distance and order Cozmo back and forth in a straight line. Various recorded animations will also be made available to consumers. All of the tasks Cozmo can perform are programmed with simple code that calls more complex operations.
According to Gizmodo, the emotionally intelligent robot could turn to become the Commodore 64 of robotics. At its time, back in the 80s, the Commodore 64 changed how people interact with technology and the way we thought about computers.
Computers were still for the very smart, the very rich and the programmers of the IBM machines that took up entire floors of buildings before the Commodore 64 box got plugged into TVs across the United States. The device gave the average consumer the chance to easy understand programming languages such as Logo and BASIC.
If there had been no Commodore 64, we would not have experienced the computer revolution of the 80s. Perhaps 20 years from now, a similar grand statement could be made for the Anki's AI-powered Cozmo robot.
Anki aims to provide every robotics enthusiast access to sophisticated AI tools. "We want to take robotics out of the lab," Tappeiner said.
