As a new robot called Sprout walks around a Manhattan office, nodding its rectangular head, lifting its windshield wiper-like "eyebrows" and offering to shake your hand with its grippers, it looks nothing like the sleek and intimidating humanoids built by companies like Tesla. Sprout's charm is the whole point. A 5-year-old child could comfortably talk at eye level with this humanoid, which stands 3.5 feet tall and wears a soft, padded exterior of foam. Forged by stealth startup Fauna Robotics over two years of secret research and development, Sprout's public debut aims to jump-start an industry of building "approachable" robots for homes, schools, and social spaces, per the AP.
The robot is, in many ways, the first of its kind, at least in the US, even as rapid advances in artificial intelligence and robot engineering have finally made it possible to start building such machines. If its emotive expressions and blinking lights seem vaguely familiar, it might be from generations of Star Wars droids and other endearingly clunky robotic sidekicks dreamed up in animation studios and children's literature. "Most people in this industry take inspiration from the science fiction that we grew up with," says Fauna Robotics co-founder and CEO Rob Cochran. "I think some do so from Westworld and Terminator. We do from WALL-E and Baymax and Rosie Jetson."
Cochran and co-founder Josh Merel, the company's chief technology officer, demonstrated the robot to the AP in mid-January ahead of its public launch. Sprout can't lift heavy objects, but it can dance the twist or the "floss," grab a toy block or teddy bear, or hoist itself from a chair to take a long stroll along the wood floors of Fauna's headquarters in New York City's Flatiron District. Sprout also knows the office layout enough to be sent on a planned mission, such as to check out the inventory of the break room refrigerator. It walks slowly but steadily on uneven ground.
"If you step in front of it, it won't crash into you, it'll plan a new path around you," says Ana Pervan, a Fauna research scientist who works on the robot's mapping and navigation. Cochran believes Fauna is "the first American company to be actively shipping robots as a developer platform" and has been hand-delivering the first models. Early customers include Disney and Boston Dynamics. "It's cute, and it's not too humanoid, and I think that actually makes it a lot more fun," says Pervan. "It's not verging on creepy or trying to be too human. It's like your buddy, your pal." More here.
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