Helper Bot
On Aug. 6, LG U+ announced that it bought an ownership stake in Boston-based Jibo for US$2 million.
Since its establishment last Jan., the U.S. startup firm has been working to develop Jibo, the industry's first social home robot with artificial intelligence. When the development of the robot is completed, it is expected to be commercialized in the U.S. as early as next year.
The company is going to enter the Asian market such as Korea, China, and Japan, in addition to its home country, with the launch of Jibo.
Jibo is the first family-oriented robot that a research team at MIT is currently developing. It can deliver messages and remind family members of things, take pictures, listen and tell stories, and make video calls.
The robot looks like it has a round, black display for a face, and a squat body. It is 28 cm tall and weighs 2.8 kg. It also has a high-resolution camera. The robot with a WiFi connection can act as more than a tool that simply helps people by reacting to people's remarks, gestures, and facial expressions that it reads through the installed camera. The most notable characteristic of the robot is that the expression shown on the round screen changes frequently, which is cute.
Specifically, Jibo is capable of taking pictures of family members, since it recognizes their faces. It can also read e-mail and send replies. The robot plays a role as a domestic assistant and personal secretary by reading fairy tales to children, controlling the temperature of the house, notifying others of appointments in advance, and delivering voice messages to friends. In robot engineering, this kind of robot is called a “social robot.”
“The core capability of Jibo is that it can communicate with people,” said Cynthia Breazeal, professor at MIT in charge of developing Jibo. On the homepage, the robot has a price tag of US$599 (around 700,000 won), but its actual price hasn't been decided yet.
LG U+ is planning to use its strategic partnership with Jibo as a springboard to emerge as the number one company in the Internet of Things (IoT) industry by 2020. The Korean mobile carrier aims to realize customer values using the robot, which is the most advanced device in which artificial intelligence and emotional technology are combined.
The carrier plans to continue its “New Life Creator” vision by actively developing “me-centric” services and products and to cooperate with global leaders like Jibo.
“Our company plans to continually introduce intelligent and emotional devices for me-centric services that can recognize and understand people, and properly give necessary feedback through learning,” said LG U+ in a statement.