Technologies dealing with human behaviour and interactions are now finding their way into homes through home assistance devices. These take the form of voice-activated hands-free devices or assistants in our phones. They play music, provide information, answer questions, read the news, check the weather and manage other home functions with voice-activated commands.
Social Robots go a step beyond voice assisted devices. They incorporate emotion. This is achieved by going beyond the speech interface to include non-verbal cues like motion or physical gestures which enhance human engagement.
At a time when technology is increasingly invading Indian households leading to usage addiction on mediums such as social media, browsing which is not meant for children, three IIT Mumbai graduates — Sneh Rajkumar Vaswani, Chintan Subhash Raikar and Prashant Iyengar founded Emotix to address the social needs of Indian parents and children.
Emotix has created an artificial intelligence based companion robot for children called Miko. It's India's first companion robot capable of engaging, educating and entertaining children above 5 years. Miko helps them learn, play and develop skills.
The Miko’s knowledge graph is based on child-centric content ontology with automated systems that build newer knowledge content every day.
Emotix says the robot can answer a varied number of questions ranging from Current Affairs, News, Maths and so on. It brings personalised India centric content with respect to various festival/events. Furthermore, the robot can also move, dance and sing. There are different games which are separate apps that the user needs to download and play with. Miko can also recite bedtime stories to children and plays games such as book cricket and Kaun Banega Crorepati. There is also a parental dashboard; it helps parents analyse the interactions between Miko and the child and guide the same.
The company claims that the sleek ABS body is completely screwless and rugged to withstand drops, kicks and wear to a significant extent. One can connect Miko via Bluetooth to the My-Miko app. It has a rechargeable battery integrated into the system which claims to last up to 3 hours. The robot comes with a price tag of Rs 19,000.
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