Although CES is done and dusted for another year, I’m still yet to share with you some of the robots that graced the exhibition hall in 2023.
Let’s get into it, starting with the little kitty that made me miss mine even more.
The CES 2023 robots I made friends with
MarsCat
Developed by Elephant Robotics, the MarsCat is touted as the world’s first bionic pet cat, aiming to be a home robot, a robotic pet to “comfort you and surprise you”. The MarsCat is fully autonomous, and as you can see in the clip below, the robot responds to your actions just like a real cat.
According to Elephant Robotics, the MarsCat can feel your touch, hear your voice, see your face and play with toys. The company also makes sure that every MarsCat is different, with subtle differences in their eyes, body and personality.
The MarsCat is also programmable.
Missing my cats so much I found a replacement #CES2023 pic.twitter.com/uKiSPWe15W
— Asha Bee (@ashabeeeee) January 5, 2023
Dog-E
Next up is Dog-E. Dog-E comes to us via WowWee, a robotic toys company. Dog-E is a smart, app-connected robot dog with life-like movements, audio sensors to hear sounds, touch sensors on its head, nose and sides of its body, and a POV (persistence of vision) tail that displays icons and messages to communicate. You can train your Dog-E to learn your name, program movements based on how you want to play and interact with it, and teach it tricks like giving kisses, singing, and responding to claps, all via the app.
Yomi
Moving away from pet robots for a second and CES 2023 also saw companies showing off some more…practical robots. Yomi is a “computerised robotic navigational system that assists clinicians during preoperative and intraoperative phases of dental implantation surgery”. The company claims Yomi is the first and only FDA-cleared robot for dental surgery.
“Yomi doesn’t replace your dentist, but rather makes their job a lot easier with haptic feedback, intuitive visualisation and audio cues. The result, procedures that normally take months can be done in as fast as a day. It’s a game-changer,” Neocis, the company behind Yomi, said.
Buddy
Back to pet-like robots for a second and Airudit is a French company that specialises in voice AI tech. It offers intelligent digital assistants and language processing services. While that is absolutely important software, it’s a little dry trying to show how this can manifest in real life. So, before heading to CES 2023, Airudit decided to bang its VALER.IA smarts into a robot that can respond to human words to give us something a little more tangible to look at.
The result is this small robot that walks, flips and waves on command. ‘Buddy’, as Airudit calls it, can understand voice commands in natural language. That means, when a human speaks directly to it, it’ll follow. What you can see in the video below was all done without an internet connection.
Just making friends with Buddy, a little robot from @airudit pic.twitter.com/SIxV0G2Xgo
— Asha Bee (@ashabeeeee) January 4, 2023
Parky
Lastly, Parky, the Autonomous EV Recharging Robot. Parky is touted by its maker Evar as bringing a charging station to any parking spot and reducing ‘charge anxiety’. “No need to look for EV Charger. Simply park your car and use NFC nearby to call EV charging robot to your car,” Evar says.
The autonomous robot has LiDAR and bumpers for safety. When Parky encounters obstacles, the robot will stop and it will come to your car when called via QR codes. It’s a pretty practical idea for spaces where installing EV chargers isn’t really an option.
While you’re here checking out robots, why not head over to our list of weird and wonderful tech from CES 2023, the cool stuff we won’t be getting in Australia or even our pick of the best laptops from this year’s show.