Meet Mirokai from Enchanted Tools
This is a cute and adorable robot, almost Anki Vector in a different form factor
In Mirokai, I felt like I met the bigger version of the Anki Vector and could sense all the possibilities of what the Anki Vector could really have been. Mirokai is an emotional robot which can socially interact with people and blend into peoples lives. Take a look at the following pictures of the early versions of Mirokai.
Along with its cute and animated display, it can move its head and ears. It can navigate like Vector and construct a topology of its surroundings with Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). It can make its way back to a charger and charge itself. Navigation is by rolling on the ball that you see in the above picture… so Mirokai can go wherever a wheelchair can, but it cannot climb stairs. It can carry items around just as food trays. And it can also blow bubbles to entertain you.
Jerome Monceoux co-founder at Enchanted Tools, and former co-founder at Aldebaran Robots and creator of Pepper and Nao robots, gave a lively talk and brought Mirokai on stage at the Humanoids Summit gathering last week. Jerome wanted to build a robot that is reflecting people’s lives, and bridging worlds between virtual reality and real life by combining grasping, navigation and social interaction to create a lively robot. Jerome felt that the humanoid robot gives AI a way to act in the physical world, and designed Mirokai to reflect that. Therefore the robot design started by first designing the character and ensuring that enchanted robots robots are created for people. Here is a picture of Mirokai at a talk during Humanoids Summit.
Mirokai has been deployed at the University Hospital of Montpellier, from where a physician gave a moving talk at the summit. Mirokai accompanies children who are undergoing cancer radiation therapy and is helpful as a companion at times when no human can be present due to the dangers of radiation therapy. Others places which are being considered for deployment are shopping malls and airports or railway stations where people are looking for emotional connections and entertainment.
I talked with staff at the Enchanted Tools booth and learned that the version on display is a second generation prototype. Full commercialization and deployment are expected next year. This robot certainly has a lot of appeal, I look forward to study how it does in the marketplace next year.