Why the first high-cost robot attack Sony Sony self-confidence
Recently, Sony introduced Xperia Hello, an intelligent robot assistant, a home desktop robot, and the first robot introduced since Sony announced its return to the robotics market.
Xperia Hello
In appearance, the Xperia Hello is about 20 cm tall and about 10 cm in diameter. It has a tracking camera attached to its head and up to 13 million pixels. The LED on the top also shows various expressions to interact with the user. Abdomen is installed a 4.6-inch 1280 × 720 resolution touch screen, looks like a mosaic of a cell phone. The overall robot looks slightly adorable.
Xperia Hello Android7.1 system, equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 processor, built-in 32GB storage space, through the Type-C interface for data transmission. Equipped with 7.1-channel microphone system, using Sony's speech recognition technology, it can accurately radio and analyze the source of the sound.
From a functional point of view, it has voice and facial recognition capabilities, maximum support input 10 user information. Gently touch "Hi Xperia" to wake it up and interact with it via voice, gestures and facial recognition.
In addition, it can be used for taking photos or video calls, reminding users as memo, and providing news, weather and road traffic information.
It is reported that XperiaHello is expected to be launched in Japan on November 18, priced at 149,880 yen (about 8795 yuan).
The rise and fall of Sony's robot
In the field of robotics, Japan has been one of the best countries in the world. 1967 Kawasaki Heavy Industries from the United States introduced the robot Unimation start, is the Japanese robotics industry began its infancy. After a short period of cradle, Japanese industrial robots entered a period of great development.
From the 1990s to the 2000s, Japan's service robotics industry started to emerge. Japanese companies poured heavily into each other to create smart home assistants for the human race. However, the tide of this robot in the market is fast and recedes quickly. Since the artificial intelligence technology was not yet mature at that time, the mechanism that let the robot operate autonomously has been difficult to achieve. After that, the development process has been stagnant and the service robot industry has also been in a dilemma.
Sony is also at this stage, has experienced the process of prosperity to decline.
In 1999, Sony introduced AIBO robot dog, AIBO was a lot of users get the favorite;
After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Sony was affected notably and the stock price plummeted.
In 2003, Sony introduced the QRIO robotics technology, but the market response was not ideal;
Until 2006, when Sony CEO Staninger stopped AIBO project, about 200 team members were disbanded and assigned to different departments, including the PlayStation and digital cameras, etc., when Sony also sold a single seat car Gave Toyota.
AIBO
Sony's robot business, also began to stop at that time, this stop, it is twelve years.
Artificial intelligence technology now ushered in their own spring, Sony, with their own in the field of smart appliances, smart phones, but also began to try to pick up the robot business unmanned.
It is understood that Sony is re-recruiting the AIBO project engineers that year, hoping to combine mechanical and AI capabilities, occupy a place in the field of home robots.
Left behind a long time also high attack, Sony why trust?
Sony in sprouting the idea of returning to the robot market, but also aimed at industrial robots this big cake. However, due to the longer history of industrial robots, the technical requirements are more systematic. Sony has been the main small smart products, based on the actual situation, Sony decided to steady, first introduced to the market home-type robot.
Not long ago, there is news that Sony will launch a domestic-like canine robot next year, which not only can be like a real dog jumping, being used as a pet, but also follow the voice prompts to operate appliances. The robot operating system developed by Sony specifically for their own. Sony discloses operating system performance parameters that allow external developers to make improvements.
The launch of Xperia Hello, the main responsibility is to fight the Amazon Alexa smart speakers, but also demonstrated Sony's own advantage, the first idea in the home robot market firm foothold.
But in the author's opinion, perhaps Sony has always been the main high-end line, Xperia Hello carrying a very good basis, in addition to selling Meng, compared with the real robot apparently far behind, the price is as high as 149880 yen A total of 8,850 yuan), the price for Sony's loyal players is not a problem, but for most of the civilian population is unpleasant.
Sony is also developing its own artificial intelligence technology, but as a late member of the home robotics market, Sony is not only lacking in technology, but also lacking in the vast amounts of data that Google and Amazon have gained since their long-term development. To compete with giants such as Amazon and Google, which have long been rooted in the field of home robotics, and sell up to nearly 150,000 yen, Sony was too confident.
Perhaps Sony trusts its products and customers very much, so marking high prices is not a problem either. After returning to the robotics market, we can not wait to see Sony gain a place in the field of home robots.