Botnono: a home robot with ChatGPT-4o that will open a new era of roboservices (or not)
It had to happen at some point, so why not now? Screwing ChatGPT to a home toy with a camera and a chassis seems like a good idea, and this is exactly what the Botnono team is trying to implement on Kickstarter. The crowdfunding campaign hasn't even started yet, but the project page has already been created and you can see a very interesting video made according to the main startup canon - Fake it till you make it. That is, imitate confidence, competence, and optimistic thinking, and then everything will work out (if you put in enough effort).
Here's What We Know
So, a robot with a slightly strange name Botnono (it seems to say so directly - I am a bot that knows only the word "no", it would be even cooler to speak only it, like Groot, but ChatGPT is not created for that). The developers promise that the toy will be able to maintain a conversation with a human. And there is no doubt about it, given that language models are moving towards multimodality, meaning they will be able to recognise images (and even facial expressions) and sounds. They will also provide standard functions for such home robots, such as conditional security (fire alarms, for example) and pet monitoring (the video even shows a laser that can be remotely controlled by the user via the app).
You can talk to Botnono, and it (or rather ChatGPT) will be able to maintain a conversation.
It can build a map of the premises and patrol the premises when the owner is not talking to it.
Recognise faces (and cat faces) and play with them (add to the specifications and price a built-in laser with micromotors in two directions of movement).
Like robotic vacuum cleaners, Botnono will have a fall protection sensor (but it won't be able to get off the table on its own - we installed it there, so you can remove it yourself).
We were also shown the robot's charging station. It looks like a conventional robot vacuum cleaner.
Price and sales launch: pain, pain, pain
Of course, the campaign hasn't even started yet, so neither the specifications nor the price nor the delivery date are known yet (and all of this may not be finalised yet). However, given that ChatGPT is not free for OpenAI (AI is generally very, very expensive), we can expect even a monthly subscription to use the gadget (although there is hope that you can link your own ChatGPT account to it and pay only for it - in general, this may become a common model in the near future).
In any case, it will be interesting to observe the development of such robots with access to ChatGPT, and something tells us that there will be more and more of them over time. Because it solves a lot of problems at once. Or it creates new ones - because without Wi-Fi, such devices will immediately turn from smart robots into dumb robots. On the other hand, should we be so afraid of excessive dependence on the Internet, because humanity already exists with a dependence on electricity consumption and we have not yet reached catastrophic consequences in this regard.
Source: Kickstarter
