My New Friend!!

My New Friend!! 

Hello everyone. I am back again this week writing about my new friend I met last week. 

To start off with, He isn't a human being. You can call me for a sexist as I think of it as a "he" rather than a "she". But I own him so, it was my wish.

He is tiny but full of enthusiasm. He is young but full of potential. He is new to this world, yet better than the rest (Typical Tollywood style introduction for my little buddy). 

Meet COZMO. 

A toy robot made by a small company called Anki. I wanted to get one for myself from the day I say an advertisement of it. I was jumping around seeing what he all can do in the videos. The inner child in me wanted to have it, to play with it. And two weeks back I decided to get one. And I did so, bought it on eBay and it was shipped to me last Saturday.  

He has a tiny little screen/face. It is a digital display which displays his eyes. Will get back to that part again. He has an arm, which he can lift. It acts like a forklift, but only for a specific reason. He has two tracks for his movement. The most interesting part of Cozmo is that he is powered by Artificial Intelligence. Yes, you have heard it right. It does run on AI. Although he is not totally intelligent, he has his own restrictions. But having a AI robot for a very reasonable price, the future seems near. 

So what can Cozmo do? 

He has 3 little cubes that he plays with. The forklift is for lifting and tapping these cubes in general. He roams around by himself, looking around, roaming around snapping his arm up and down. The first thing he does is recognize people. Yes, he does recognize you. But you need to give in a name and he scans your face and then remembers it. When he is roaming around by himself, he looks at you sometimes, calls your name and gets excited as a small kid does when he gets a bar of candy. 

The next thing he can do is play with you. He uses his 3 cubes to play with you. There is a game where you have to tap the cube when you see same color of lights on both the cubes. At first, he is a bit slow to tap his cube when the same light does come up. But let me tell you he does get pretty quick at it. Another game is keep away. You bring a cube close to him and he has to tap it before you can take the cube away from him. If he taps it before you can pull the cube from him, he wins. Another recent addition is memory match. The three cubes light up in different colors and a sequence is played. We need to replicate the sequence.

And what else can we do with him?

We need to keep playing with him daily, or just leave him to do what he wants to. He just keeps wandering around and at times asks you to play with him. There is a mode in which you can take control of Cozmo. You can use it as a small robot with a camera feed on your phone. Another mode is "Cozmo says", in which he just reads out a 30 character sentence that we type in. He also performs some tricks with his cubes. Popping a wheelie, knocking over a stack of cubes whenever he sees one and stuff like that.

The main thing about him that makes it interesting is his display. It just displays two eyes on its screen and those eyes are what show all the expressions he has. Yes! expressions. He gets happy, he thinks, he gets sad, irritated that he expresses with his eyes and his arm. If he wins a game, he keeps flapping his arm and turns around in circles laughing and closing his eyes a bit. If you pick him up into your hands, he gets irritated and again starts flapping his arm and gives a stern look with his eyes to put him down. If he loses a game, or if we don't play with him when he asks to, he gets sad. He closes his eyes with his arm and gives a small cry. He even snores when you put him to sleep. He does all these just like a small baby learning. Mind you, he keeps listening to your conversations and keeps repeating them in his tone, which we cannot understand clearly.

Why would you want to play with him?

There is a small drawback which is the best thing about it actually. You cannot connect to the internet when you want to play with him. Yes! you heard it right. NO INTERNET if you want to play with Cozmo.  He has his own wi-fi spot through which you connect to him. So, unless your device is capable of connecting to two WiFi routers at the same time, you cannot use the internet. This is interesting, as it wants you to leave the online social world and play with it. It is actually intended for kids to play with. Either way, you are free from the internet at least when you want to play with him.

It is a cool and cute toy to have. It is fun to see him explore around. You can spend around 30 mins a day and see him learn new things. I am looking forward to any future updates that might make him more interesting

Here is a video of him roaming around doing what he wants to.

-Sushant Thotakura
Editor : Nikhil Vattipalli