Roommate needed: Must like to watch anime, wake me up with a good morning, let me know if I need an umbrella for work today, text me during the day, turn on the lights as I’m coming home, and tell me good night as I drift off to sleep. I’m looking for someone with blue hair and a cute dress, and comes in her own 12 pound sealed container. I’ll pay up to $3,000 to have you shipped from Japan, and will wait up to a year for you to arrive. Because, apparently, I’m extremely lonely.
Enter: Gatebox’s Virtual Home Robot, Azuma Hikari.
Okay… I haven’t quite decided yet whether this is cool, or creepy. It’s probably both. Actually, it’s a lot of both. But, it is probably the next phase in integrated home technology and personal interactive technology. The video below shows the lonely Japanese professional and how his day is brightened by the sweet robot’s comments, suggestions, tweets, and courteous actions throughout the day. Once you get passed the weirdness of it all, I think that you can see the attraction (both in a good way, and in a bad way) of how this type of technology will advance the likes of what we have with Apple’s Siri, and Amazon’s Alexa voice response systems.
The system is being presold now (around $3,000 with shipping), and as of last week there have been over 200 units sold. A more extensive, 27 minute explanation and demonstration is available from Tokyo Otaku Mode’s Facebook page.
Creepy or not, I think this is the first of many virtual holographic personal assistants to come.