ANKI, An HOME ROBOTICS COMPANY POWERS DOWN

#News(Startup) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]

Anki, maker of Vector, a toy-like autonomous countertop robot, is shutting down, and hundreds of people are losing their jobs. It’s a brutal answer to a question we asked last summer: Sure, home robots like Vector are cute, but is this something consumers actually want? Apparently not enough customers for Anki, but here’s what’s far less clear: Beyond the success of Roomba, what on earth do we want sophisticated machines to do for us around the house?

The problem with both, and now Anki’s Vector, was that none of them really did a whole lot. Unlike the Roomba and the mythically capable Rosie from The Jetsons, they didn’t have a specific job to do. They were all cute, yes, and undeniably charismatic, but three makes a curse: Vector, Jibo, and Kuri show that you can’t sell a home robot on adorableness alone. The machine can’t just be a companion—it has to be a laborer.

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