TangibleFuture’s LOOI Turns Smartphones Into Ambulatory Companion Robots with ChatGPT Help

Self-described “interactive innovation” agency TangibleFuture is crowdfunding for a equipment designed to show a smartphone into an ambulatory companion robotic — full with a hyperlink to OpenAI’s ChatGPT massive language mannequin for natural-language interplay.

“We started with a dream, that everybody who desires their very own robotic can afford one,” TangibleFuture’s Xiohui Zhang says of the mission’s origin. “LOOI transforms your telephone into a unusual cyber-creature by a magnetic connection, permitting him to return to life like a bit being from one other galaxy. With easy gestures, LOOI injects pleasure into each second, revolutionizing your desk presence in a single pleasant package deal. He’s your most entertaining and intimate companion.”

The LOOI robotic platform itself is a small wheeled robotic that includes contact sensors, impediment sensors, a time-of-flight (ToF) distance sensor, cliff sensors to forestall it wandering off an edge, and LED headlights with an RGB LED bar for extra flexibility. These aren’t the gadget’s major output, although: that is your present telephone, which connects to a magnetic mount level doubling as a Qi-compatible wi-fi charger.

“LOOI not solely enhances your major telephone’s capabilities but additionally offers your idle telephones a second life by remodeling them into full of life desktop robots,” Zhang says of the potential for upcycling otherwise-unwanted smartphones. “This might be the best technique to reuse outdated telephones at present.”

As soon as linked, LOUI makes use of the telephone as a show for animated eyes, the digital camera for object monitoring, gesture recognition, and facial recognition, and for a rising variety of video games. To boost the robotic’s capabilities, TangibleFuture has linked the platform to OpenAI’s ChatGPT — which means it will possibly reply to natural-language prompts, although on the danger of hallucinations and different surprising outputs.

The LOOI is now funding on Kickstarter with bodily rewards watching $119 for early chicken backers, a claimed 29 p.c low cost over the machine’s deliberate retail worth. All {hardware} is predicted to ship in August this yr, the corporate has mentioned.