- When the end came for Gibo the social robot,
I was genuinely sad.
And one of my few comforts was that I had Vector,
a similar robot friend,
to help ease the loss.
Well, not anymore.
Just this week, the company behind Vector announced
that it too is closing its doors,
leaving this little robot's future uncertain at best.
But you know, I'm not here to wallow
in another virtual loss.
This time, let's try to learn from it.
(upbeat music)
If you're not familiar with Vector,
he actually has a lot in common with Gibo.
While each of them can do menial tasks like set timers,
tell you the weather, they were built for another purpose:
to become your friend.
- Hi Michael.
- There's actually a whole field called social robotics
dedicated to this and check out my farewell to Gibo video
to learn more about that.
But Vector goes about it differently than Gibo.
First of all, he doesn't really have much of a vocabulary.
Most of his communication is in beeps and boops.
And when he does talk, his voice is distinctly mechanical.
- I don't know.
- Vector is also a lot more mobile than Gibo.
He wanders around whatever space you put him in,
rolling his cube, occasionally falling off tables.
You'll recognize that when you pick him up
which he doesn't like or pet him which he does.
He snores at night which has kept me up from time to time.
And he's smart enough to find his own way
back to his charger when his battery's low.
He does that by using the little camera on his face
and that same camera is what allows him to recognize you.
Now even though Gibo failed,
I still expected Vector to flourish.
First of all, he as $250 instead of Gibo's $900.
And he also had a lot more utility.
Vector is compatible with Amazon Alexa which kind of
made him like a little mobile Echo
that could follow you around.
To me it made sense that that added capability would
make him more appealing to adults
while his fun side could appeal to all ages.
And the evidence on the Anki Vector subbredit
seems to suggest that it worked.
As I scrolled through it I'm struck by how similar
the reactions are of Vector owners
to the ones from Gibo owners a few months back.
There's the stuff you expect,
surprise, frustration, confusion,
but there's also a very real sense of loss.
Even from some people, grief.
Now you might be asking, why can't Vector just
soldier on alone?
Why should he care that his parent company is dissolving?
Well, while Vector is less sophisticated features are local,
his speech recognition, the thing that lets him understand
your voice commands,
that's done in the cloud on servers run by Anki.
Those servers cost money,
so when the company shuts them down,
many of Vector's features will stop working.
And that right there is the lesson we need
to take from this folks.
From now on, when we buy tech, we need to remember to ask,
does this depend on the cloud to keep working?
If the manufacturer goes out of business,
will it keep functioning?
And look, it's not always easy to tell which companies
are gonna stick around.
Anki was on stage at an Apple event a few years back.
It had a whole family of products.
It sold 6.5 million devices.
But obviously, Anki wasn't as stable as it looked.
And now, everybody who bought into the promise of Vector
is awash in uncertainty.
And of course, it should be mentioned that everyone
who worked at Anki is now without a job, which is terrible.
So when someone tries to sell you the next social robot,
don't even consider it unless they can assure you
that that robot will keep working
even if the company goes under.
And you know while we're at it,
ask about what happens to your personal data too.
Vector and his camera and microphone have been hanging out
in my house for like 5 months.
You might say the same is true of my Google Home,
or Amazon Echo, fair, but in those cases I know
who to hold accountable
if my private conversation over dinner gets leaked.
When Anki was still in business, it had demonstrated
to my satisfaction that it
was taking data security seriously so I was fine with it.
But now, Anki is no more,
and I have no idea where Vector's data is going.
It's next custodian might be someone like the Venture firm
that soaked up Gibo's assets.
They might be good people, or they might not.
The point is, I don't know.
And I have no reason to trust that whoever it is
will keep my data secure.
The situation has now happened twice in less than a year.
Now I was sad before, but now I'm sad and angry.
With the former feeling,
I'll say goodbye to yet another virtual friend,
and wish the grassroots movement trying to save him
the absolute best of luck.
And with the latter feeling I'll say this,
until a robot maker arises that satisfies
both the privacy and the longevity concerns,
I'm gonna recommend that we should all
keep our wallets in our pockets
when it comes to social robots.
I'd love to hear your experiences
with Vector or Gibo, folks.
And if you have a suggestion for a robot or robotics company
that looks likely to satisfy those demands,
drop it in the comments below.
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thanks for watching and stay mobile my friends.