ASUS Zenbo

[Nic]

So after the serious business of announcing their new Zenphone 3 line up the people over at ASUS have decided to try their hands at some comedy with a fictitious home robot dubbed the "Zenbot".

A slick website and well made marketing video also accompanied the the presentation given by ASUS chairmain Jonney Shih.

The Zenbot was priced at $599 USD   

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The robot can roam around independently, and take directions by voice command. ZenBo's face also acts as a touchpad interface: you'll be able to place video calls, shop online, as well as stream video content, when it's not blushing.

It's still early days, but ASUS says ZenBo will offer spoken reminders to its owners, like doctor appointment and medication cues. It'll also be able to send emergency messages to family members if someone falls down — you can even take control of the robot and check the situation from ZenBo's built in camera. For kids, the robot will be able to (awkwardly, robotically) dance along to music as well as read stories aloud from its built-in library. Naturally, ASUS is promoting a Zenbo developer program, with access to the bot's SDK and more information to help birth apps — something very important if the robot is to be a success.

 

Spoiler

Zenbo site 

Engadget

The Verge

JK

In all seriousness though, I think this might actually be a real product.

Its an interesting concept but it has so many fatal design flaws I find it difficult to comprehend it ever being a successes.

These include:

• To short, it would be a pain always having to look down to its display.
• From the video it appears very slow and would likely get in the way a lot.
• Being so short would always be getting tripped over.
• Speech recognition is generally still awful.
• Hackers, NSA, Skynet, etc.
• Seems very dependent on third party support.
• Stairs.

   

[vanished]

I want to know who told them people actually want this thing  

[Bouzoo]

So it's a robot version of Siri/Cortana that controls your life and follows you like a little minion but is independent if they feel like it? How convenient. 

 

And ofc possibly the ultimate trool.

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It'll also be able to send emergency messages to family members if someone falls down

Imagine if someone hacks one of there.

[suicidalfranco]

2 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I want to know who told them people actually want this thing  

i want to know the same for stuff like the Amazon Echo

[Stefan1024]

A: "Hmmm the pepole get mad when we spay at them......"

 

B: "Let's just add some features to the camera and microphone and let the people pay for it. We can exactly see what they do 24/7 and they are even happy with it."

 

A. "Problem solved "

[Mihle]

Its a cool thing that would be cool to have, but Zenbo isnt good enough.