Remember the Vector? A tiny tractor-shaped anthropomorphized robot that sat on your desk, held up snacks, and kept you company? If you do, you also remember its unceremonious demise. Anki folded due to bankruptcy, selling all its assets to another company that pretty much killed the Vector’s functionality. It’s sort of like the Humane AI pin, which ended up getting pretty much shuttered after the company declared it was shutting down. There are now thousands of Anki Vector toys just gathering dust, sitting in the shadow of what could have been.
However, a similar product may be fulfilling the Vector’s role, with the exact same demeanor and cuteness. Meet the Focus Buddy, a tiny robot designed to look like an anthropomorphic computer, sitting on your desk. Like the Vector, the Focus Buddy interacts with you, through input and expression – however, it has a more distinct purpose than simply entertainment – its purpose is to boost human focus.
Designer: Neurofocus.ai
Focus Buddy is a tiny touch-enabled device that uses a combination of sensors to check your attentiveness. Think a pomodoro timer but with AI chops. It’s playful, but plays a pretty fundamental role in your productivity, checking to see if you’re attentive, distracted, or just dissociating (mea culpa).
The tiny device, no larger than a chonky webcam, sits on your tabletop, with a 2-ish inch screen that usually shows a friendly face with blinking eyes similar to the Anki Vector. Tap the screen, and you can access a variety of settings as well as games that help boost your focus.
The way the Focus Buddy works is simple yet advanced. A webcam on top captures your face, reading your gaze, how many times you blink, and whether you look attentive, sleepy, or just listless. However, a millimeter-wave sensor inside the robot also manages to read your heart rate, combining the two metrics to judge your focus. If it detects a drop, it alerts you, and encourages you to either get back to work, or boost your focus using one of its on-board focus-enhancing exercises.
The device is currently in a very rudimentary phase (the company is purely China-based and hasn’t even built its website yet), with its makers looking to slowly reach critical mass. For now, however, the Focus Buddy is a perfect symbol of what the Vector could have been – a buddy that guides you through the day and enables you to be your best self. Also, it’s the perfect size for cat-hats, so you can customize your Focus Buddy with a rodeo had, a tiara, probably even a modded 3D printed Batman or Iron Man mask that works without blocking the screen or impeding the webcam!
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