Apple has Siri, Google has Google Now, and Microsoft has
Cortana. Each of them is a virtual assistant that has a duty to help smartphone
users to do their daily activities. The problem is they have not been able to
interact naturally just like an assistant in the real world.
They may know about a lot of things, but they are not ready
to be a friend for our children because the way they interact is still in one
direction. For this task, we need an AI (artificial intelligence) that's able
to do two-way communication naturally.
This is the mission that's carried by Musio, a cute robot
which is undergoing a fundraising campaign on Indiegogo. Regardless of its
cuteness, this robot is powered by a super-sophisticated AI brain called Muse.
So what are the advantages of Musio compared to a virtual
assistant? The first is of course its ability to communicate naturally. Musio
is able to express its emotions, apologize when you accuse it doing a wrong
thing, but the most important is this robot is able to remember what you say and
teach.
Thus, Musio is an exciting friend for your children. The AI
that's brought by Musio is equipped with deep learning technology that can
accumulate the data on a massive scale. Furthermore, because Musio brings the
Arduino electronic board and is designed in the open-source ecosystem, it can
be programmed according to the creativity of each developer; one of examples is
to be a private teacher for the children.
But besides being a friend for your children, Musio is also
ready to replace Siri as your personal assistant. It will remind you related to
the daily agenda that must be done, as well as instruct a variety of smart home
devices that are connected to a Wi-Fi network.
On the spare time, Musio can also throw some jokes to
entertain you. It's able to distinguish with whom it's speaking, so that each
family member can communicate with this robot personally and naturally.
Musio comes with a remote named Sophy. Sophy can be regarded
as an 'extra eye' for Musio, where you can use it to scan books or other
objects to be studied by Musio, before interacts with you.
From a technical perspective, Musio is offered in three
'levels of intelligence': Simple, Smart and Genius. The Simple variant can only
remember up to five conversations and is not connected to the Internet. This
variant is packing 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, 16 GB storage and a 1.800mAh
battery.
For Smart and Genius variants that are smarter than the
Simple variant, are powered by a quad-core processor (1.2 GHz for Smart
variant, 2.5 GHz for Genius variant) and running with Android 5.0 Lollipop
operating system. The Smart variant is equipped with 16 GB storage and a 2,200mAh
battery, while the Genius variant is equipped with 64 GB storage and a 3,000mAh
battery. The Wi-Fi AC and Bluetooth 4 are also presented in both these variants
so that they are ready to control the smart home devices in the vicinity.
Musio campaign in Indiegogo has reached its target, but if
you are interested, you can choose the pledge worth of: 1) $ 159 for Simple
variant, 2) $ 299 for Smart variant or 3) $ 599 for Genius variant.