It tells you how long you have petted it for (touch the top of its head and Vector is very happy), how long its travelled and how long he's been, well, alive. Its upcoming Alexa integration will be interesting as it will mean that Alexa essentially takes over the device - so if you already have Alexa in the home, it's inevitable that you will start using Vector even more. These include voice command access as well as new features, such as animations, expressions, games, and more!

In fact, it is about to get Alexa integration which will unlock the potential of this device, that perhaps we didn't quite see when reviewing it. Overdrive, its push into the racing-set space, was a fun hybrid of Scalextric-style controls and app gaming.Curious, independent, and powered by some preposterous tech and AI, he can read the room, express the weather, announce when his timer’s done, take the perfect snapshot, and so much more. It sees using an ultra-wide FOV HD camera and infrared laser scanner and it hears using a beamforming four-microphone array. Anki has had to shift the computational power that was mostly done through the app on to the robot itself, swapping out a tiny processor for something much bigger. Powered by ai and advanced robotics, he’s alive with personality and engaged by sight, sound, and touch.

i change things for him, cans, objects to play with,and he does his best to wind me up by throwing them off the top. His obsession with technology goes back to his first PC—the IBM Thinkpad with the lift-up keyboard for swapping out the drive.Vector is an updating platform, Cloud connected via Wi-Fi so he’s always learning and updating with new skills and features. When we weren't asking it to do things, it would test out its area and just wonder about, understanding its surroundings and come on over ready to play. In our tests, Vector was able to recognise our face and voice once we asked it to - it can understand different dialects such as UK and US - and it spoke back to us in a very garbled but cute robotic voice.

Yes, they’re fun desktop companions, but aside from a couple of games and some rudimentary responses, Cozmo and Vector are hardly must-have devices. If you ask nicely, Vector will calculate square roots and tell you how many people live in Kathmandu. Open Source Extension Engine - connect with third-party services to collect external information (weather, data from other smart devices, and more). While making it app - and phone - free (apart from setup) sounds like an easy fix, there's been a lot of graft behind the scenes for this to happen. Recode says the company is forced to close its doors “after a new round of financing fell through at the last minute.Built to explore and react to its surroundings, the Vector can intuitively move around its environment without colliding with anything or falling over any edges. This extra power boosts means that Vector can do a lot of things and while Anki is keen not to brand it a virtual assistant, whisper it, the things it can - and eventually will - do are very much what you would expect from the likes of Google Assistant and Alexa. We'll certainly revisit Vector when the Alexa integration is live but for now Vector is a fun, robot companion with a mighty big brain.