Unlike the anybot, which is meant to act as an avatar for those business meetings you couldn’t get to, Qbo is designed to be your robot buddy.
The designer–whose name seems to be absent from any piece of information about Qbo–says in his blog that he envisioned Qbo as something “small, something similar to a cat or dog, it would interact with me in a logical way and would look nice in my environment.”
The designer goes on to say that he values the importance of a robot that could use speech recognition and synthesis to talk with you, and hopefully Qbo’s artificial intelligence could continue to improve. Qbo also possesses stereoscopic vision and Wifi/Bluetooth connections. Its ultrasound sensors keep Qbo from crashing into walls and other things that might block his path.
As it stands, however, the information on Qbo and what exactly it will be able to do is shrouded in mystery. The designer alludes to surprising new features and claims that the robot will be available for “affordable” prices, but we don’t know yet what exactly that will be; my guess is somewhere between an iPad and the dinosaur robot put out by Kokoro.
