Buddy

Los robots están empezando a ser utilizados no solo en las industrias, laboratorios, universidades y fábricas, sino también como algo bastante accesible para muchas personas. Hace poco leí que existe un modelo en Japón llamado Pepper, que se vende y hasta renta como todo un asistente de oficina.

Ahora salió este juguetito, llamado “Buddy” y que promete ser el primer robot “familiar” (doméstico) pensado para ser todo un ayudante en casa, tanto para niños como para grandes, con funciones sociales, didácticas y de conversación (reconocimiento facial, de voz, de gestos), inter-conectividad con varios otros aparatos inteligentes, cámara, control remoto, y muchas otras funciones, sensores y herramientas más (que se venden de manera independiente como módulos) para irlo equipando de acuerdo a tus necesidades.

¿Porqué me llamó la atención esto? Hace mucho tiempo que los robots se han utilizado para trabajar. Pero lo que se me hace nuevo -y significativo- es que un robot ya pueda ser parte de la familia, ser alguien a quien confíes tareas y de quien aprendas cosas nuevas, con quien platicas y hasta creas una relacion especial, una amistad, con los evidentes lazos afectivos que esto puede implicar para ti y todos tus familiares. En la ciencia ficción hay innumerables lecciones sobre lo bueno y lo malo de llevar esto a sus últimas consecuencias. Ojalá hayamos aprendido algo.

En fin, ya pueden comprar  a “Buddy” en la página de Indiegogo. Feliz futuro…

Buddy, a family robot currently available for pre-order on Indiegogo, seems to be a lot nicer. Indeed, the second that Buddy rolled into the office, everybody was quick to rush over to ooh and aww as they snapped selfies with the cute little guy.

Buddy is set to boast a pretty expansive features set that makes him more than just a cute toy. He’ll be able to act as a smart hub for a variety of your internet-connected home products and can also monitor your home in a much more mobile way than other smartcams can through telepresence.

Blue Frog Robotics, the team building Buddy, wants the happy little dude to become a part of the family. Buddy will have facial recognition capabilities to recognize family members and get to know their needs. Buddy has features specially catered towards children including a number of fun and educational games, as well as medication reminders and fall detection for more elderly users…

http://tcrn.ch/1KB7kuu

Steve Jobs no dejaba que sus hijos usaran el iPad…

Otra de esas paradojas de la vida (y  en un mundo tecnológico):
La gente que se dedica a producir -y vendernos- algunos de los gadgets más adictivos es la que menos permite que esta sea adoptada por su hijos en su vida diaria.

Seguro sabía algo, ¿no? Otra prueba de que los mejores negocios no se hacen vendiendo NO lo mejor; sino todo lo contrario…

When Steve Jobs was running Apple, he was known to call journalists to either pat them on the back for a recent article or, more often than not, explain how they got it wrong. I was on the receiving end of a few of those calls. But nothing shocked me more than something Mr. Jobs said to me in late 2010 after he had finished chewing me out for something I had written about an iPad shortcoming.

“So, your kids must love the iPad?” I asked Mr. Jobs, trying to change the subject. The company’s first tablet was just hitting the shelves. “They haven’t used it,” he told me. “We limit how much technology our kids use at home.”

I’m sure I responded with a gasp and dumbfounded silence. I had imagined the Jobs’s household was like a nerd’s paradise: that the walls were giant touch screens, the dining table was made from tiles of iPads and that iPods were handed out to guests like chocolates on a pillow.

Nope, Mr. Jobs told me, not even close.

Since then, I’ve met a number of technology chief executives and venture capitalists who say similar things: they strictly limit their children’s screen time, often banning all gadgets on school nights, and allocating ascetic time limits on weekends.

I was perplexed by this parenting style. After all, most parents seem to take the opposite approach, letting their children bathe in the glow of tablets, smartphones and computers, day and night.

Yet these tech C.E.O.’s seem to know something that the rest of us don’t…

http://nyti.ms/1G0nEBi