I'm mainly looking for the companion side of the bot more than the camera so I'm not sure if I'll be too disappointed. I am also just buying the unit to help Mayfield Robotics make their product more accessible for those with visual impairments. I'm really torn about whether to jump now and reserve while the robot is within my reach price wise[.] What do you guys think?
Talon
My opinion may be contradictory since I ended up pre-ordering one. So far, I haven't seen a lot of things advertised from the Kuri team that convince me of the companion side (compared to AIBOs largely being oriented as companion robots). However, I find that the Kuri team doesn't advertise a lot so I figure it really lacks features, they're not fully comfortable with its development (like it's still undergoing significant software refinements), or they're going the route of being fairly vague so that it's kind of an "experience" to start using Kuri since you truly know so little.
I am hoping it's not truly that void of features at its price, and while I follow them on their website and social media, if they start turning all the features into a more technical manual, I may be more inclined to block it out in order to have the awe of the experience. Kind of like how when I had an AIBO 111, I knew so little outside of basic functions, that raising it was quite an experience. Though realistically, I don't expect Kuri being this way.
That said, the feature that seems to get the most hype or explanation is that Kuri can be used for "home awareness" (they have a blog post outlining why they don't call it home security). Kuri grabs recordings (I think 10 or something 5 second clips a day) to help create "memories" - which seems to be the most pushed feature. I'm pretty neutral on this so we'll see how it plays out. And the fact you can chime in and see roaming camera view of your home (or wherever Kuri is at) is a cool feature to me. But as I mentioned, there are cheaper ways to accomplish that. Outside of the audio side of that, I'm not sure how useful that feature would be for someone with visual impairments, but I say that as someone used to experiencing the world fully sighted so it could be quite naive.
Some features I've read about that seem more companion-side (and I hope continue to develop as these are even more interesting to me), are "romojiis" - which is how Kuri expresses things through sounds, movement, and color (the circle light centered on the front of the robot that you can only see when Kuri's "activating" them). When they describe that, they mention that Kuri can be tickled, sneezes, and purr! Hopefully that means they're taking development of a true personality fairly seriously too.
A few things I read mention that when you first set Kuri up, you manually drive it around and tell it what rooms are what through the Kuri app (which you can then tell Kuri later to go to a specific room). They also mention that Kuri updates are delivered through the app. And in the videos I watch, the way the eyes blink really seem to be an incredible feature in making Kuri have some personality.
I would say if your main goal in buying one would be to help make the product more accessible to the visually impaired, then don't. I think the company should be offering you a significant discount, if not a free one, in that instance since you're effectively helping them develop it. But maybe that's harsh or ignorant of me. I think given the significant ambiguity of the companion side of it, I'd be cautious on that. My pre-order justification was largely the camera features in a cute robot. I also think if the upcoming $100 increase is pushing you to pull the trigger sooner rather than later, then don't - waiting for more reviews (especially if you decide not to buy based on what you discover) might be more prudent. And if reviews start coming out or ongoing development shows it does more of what you'd hope for in the future, then hopefully the $100 increase wouldn't be too detrimental in the long run.
That said, I say all of that as someone who did pre-order it mostly because it's a camera in cute form and set my expectations way low--which at $800, I probably should have came to the opposite conclusion. So there's my hypocritical non-answer lol.
Author
Topic: Kuri (Read 67109 times)