Welcome to Hitting the Books. With less than one in five Americans reading just for fun these days, we've done the hard work for you by scouring the internet for the most interesting, thought provoking books on science and technology we can find and...
Worried about the robot apocalypse? We all are. Here’s something different. Rather than trying to kill you or take your job, this new Japanese robot just roams around your house and asks you for hugs. That’s a refreshing change. It is called Lovot and has a plush body that’s warm and cuddly, and big, bright eyes.
The high-tech companion was actually developed by former Formula 1 racecar designer Kaname Hayashi who also worked on Softbank’s Pepper humanoid robot. He says that everything about the robot is designed to create attachment. It doesn’t talk, but chirps instead. Its eyes have six graphical layers that can mimic involuntary eye movement, presumably to make it more lifelike and less creepy.
Even the heat that’s generated by the onboard computer is designed to make it desirable to hold. The heat is directed to the robot’s surface so that it feels warm to the touch. There are more than 50 sensors on the body that can detect touch too. With the help of more than 10 CPU cores, its three cameras map and navigate the environment so that it can remember up to 1,000 people and tell them all apart.
Lovot is priced at around $3,000, and needs a monthly subscription which starts at $90. It goes up for sale in Japan next year. Those are some expensive hugs.
Worried about the robot apocalypse? We all are. Here’s something different. Rather than trying to kill you or take your job, this new Japanese robot just roams around your house and asks you for hugs. That’s a refreshing change. It is called Lovot and has a plush body that’s warm and cuddly, and big, bright eyes.
The high-tech companion was actually developed by former Formula 1 racecar designer Kaname Hayashi who also worked on Softbank’s Pepper humanoid robot. He says that everything about the robot is designed to create attachment. It doesn’t talk, but chirps instead. Its eyes have six graphical layers that can mimic involuntary eye movement, presumably to make it more lifelike and less creepy.
Even the heat that’s generated by the onboard computer is designed to make it desirable to hold. The heat is directed to the robot’s surface so that it feels warm to the touch. There are more than 50 sensors on the body that can detect touch too. With the help of more than 10 CPU cores, its three cameras map and navigate the environment so that it can remember up to 1,000 people and tell them all apart.
Lovot is priced at around $3,000, and needs a monthly subscription which starts at $90. It goes up for sale in Japan next year. Those are some expensive hugs.
Facebook's quest to help singletons find love continues. After launching its Dating feature in Colombia in September, it's now rolling the service out to Canada and Thailand. And, presumably based on feedback from its Colombian users, it's adding a c...
Where will you meet your next bae? If Facebook has anything to do with it, it'll be through its new dating feature, which it's now testing in Colombia. Announced back in May at the F8 developer's conference, Facebook wants to help its 200 million+ si...
We spotted the cute Little Live Scruff-A-Luvs back in January the first time at the Nuremberg Toy Fair. The US reveal of the cute furry plush toys from Moose Toys was at the NYC Toy Fair back in...
We spotted the cute Little Live Scruff-A-Luvs back in January the first time at the Nuremberg Toy Fair. The US reveal of the cute furry plush toys from Moose Toys was at the NYC Toy Fair back in...
The science involved in making a match on Tinder is rudimentary at best: you can narrow your pool of potential baes by age and distance, and after that you're largely on your own, relying on carefully selected photographs and vague bios that reveal h...
Video games are good at war. For decades, games have covered the breadth, horror and honor of battle in every conceivable arena, from ancient history to futuristic space stations, from the hills of Mordor to the beaches of Normandy. Games have a long...
The results of the USA Today Ad Meter 30th Anniversary Bracket are in. The public named Budweiser’s “Puppy Love” the best Super Bowl commercial of all time. That damn ad still gives me goosebumps...
Welcome to Hitting the Books. With less than one in five Americans reading just for fun these days, we've done the hard work for you by scouring the internet for the most interesting, thought provoking books on science and technology we can find and...
Facebook's quest to help singletons find love continues. After launching its Dating feature in Colombia in September, it's now rolling the service out to Canada and Thailand. And, presumably based on feedback from its Colombian users, it's adding a c...
Where will you meet your next bae? If Facebook has anything to do with it, it'll be through its new dating feature, which it's now testing in Colombia. Announced back in May at the F8 developer's conference, Facebook wants to help its 200 million+ si...
The science involved in making a match on Tinder is rudimentary at best: you can narrow your pool of potential baes by age and distance, and after that you're largely on your own, relying on carefully selected photographs and vague bios that reveal h...
Video games are good at war. For decades, games have covered the breadth, horror and honor of battle in every conceivable arena, from ancient history to futuristic space stations, from the hills of Mordor to the beaches of Normandy. Games have a long...
