For a long time, tech companies have introduced pet cameras as a way to find out what your furball is doing when you’re not home. Vex, a new robotic companion launched at CES this week, takes it a step further: It follows your pet, films it as it moves, and uses AI smarts to stitch together a video from the footage.
Vex is a small white sphere that comes with cute, stubby limbs, ears, and different colored accessories. It’s compact enough to hold in one hand, so it will almost certainly be smaller than whatever pet you want to film.
It’s autonomous enough to follow your cat or dog around the house and play with them, and uses visual recognition to identify specific pets. It films just like that, capturing low-angle footage that should get a little closer to your pet’s perspective, and cuts each day’s footage into “moving stories and shareable stories.” However, creator FrontierX hasn’t actually shared any examples of that edited footage, which would be a real test of whether it’s worthwhile or not.
It is joined by Aura, a large circular bot with a circular screen for a face. It’s being sold more as a companion bot for people, with the ability to read body language and facial expressions to understand your mood. Like Wex it can follow you and even talk to you with the help of LLM-powered conversation features.
Both Wex and Aura are still in development – FrontierX is so early stage that it doesn’t even have a website yet, just a simple Instagram page. Still, the company says it will be ready to take preorders in the next six months, though it hasn’t said how much either robot will cost.
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