WHAT IS A ROBOT A robot wheels toward two plastic of the blocks It sets this block on top of the blocks Using a lever on the front of its body Cozmo picks up one other block The robot beeps Its animated blue eyes light up A woman brings over a third block She points to the top of the second block She wants the third block stacked here But the robot is too short It can’t reach The woman picks up the block and stacks it herself The robot wheels over to the stacked blocks and knocks them down It rolls away Cozmo is a robot that can learn about its environment
DESIGNING ROBOTS ANKI Anki is a robotics company based in San Francisco California It was founded by three graduates of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute It is best known for its toy robot Cozmo Anki’s president and founder is Hanns Tappeiner He said Cozmo is like a Pixar robot come to life There’s a good reason for this Anki hired former employees from Pixar the animation studio behind movies such as WALL-E They also hired a group of animators to design Cozmo’s movement and behavior Anki tries to make robots that don’t seem like robots Not playing with Cozmo for a week should feel like not playing with your puppy for a week said Boris Sofman another Anki founder making a noise designed to sound like laughter DIFFERENT KINDS OF ROBOTS When most people think of robots they think of robots that are made to work Some of these robots work in factories Some of them go places that are dangerous for people to go such as space But some robots are made just for fun Cozmo the block-stacking robot
A robotic arm works in a factory is this kind of robot He is an entertainment robot made to play with people Robot scientists called roboticists make robots for lots of different reasons and to do many different jobs That means robots can look very different Some are playful robots such as Cozmo Others are mechanical-arm robots used in factories Some robots assemble or paint cars There are many kinds of robots
