Despite all efforts by DDL to prevent it (some of them questionable in my opinion), Living.AI yesterday started the Kickstarter campaign for their companion robot Emo. I already talked about him in an earlier post.
The campaign reached it’s funding goal of 50000 dollars within half an hour, is at this moment at nearly 260000 dollars – and counting.
The smallest reward tier is 129 dollars, for that you will (hopefully) get an Emo and a companion Smart light. Shipping to europe is another 20 dollars.
You most probably will now say: But what about CE and VAT and taxes? And what if they do not deliver? And if Emo is bad?
I can act as a company at customs and tell them that Emo is not for end users but for research and development. So I will get him imported even without a CE symbol. I am aware of the fact that I will need to pay around 21% additional fees on import and I am okay with that. If Emo is bad: Well, so be it. This is a risk you take with every Kickstarter. If they do not deliver in february I can make use of the european credit card chargeback process that let’s me charge back payments for up to 120 days. Also there may be the problem that the smart light will not fit european plugs, but I don’t care about the light anyway.
I also backed Emo explicitly for the fact that some people at DDL will get a hissy fit with every backer for the robot they see on Kickstarter. If DDL would have treated me with the respect I deserve as a customer and a Kickstarter backer and if they would act and communicate professionally I would have showered them with money. Money that now goes elsewhere.
If you want more information about Emo, you can follow Living.AI on Facebook or instagram, but the posts are quite sparse.
Promo image copyright Living.AI
Imho , EMO is a waste of money and his fail is very certain.
Anki made all its robots after many years of development with many engineers. It is not the case of EMO company.
DDL based all his future robots on IP and Anki brevets and technology , it has a very special advantage on others. Vector is incomplete because Anki has no time to complete it like Cozmo (many features and games should be added to Vector in the future) Now DDL try to follow its path with its new way and make some mistakes and grow at the same time (5 to 28 peoples). Jacob is smart and has the ambition to become a big robotics company.Let’s Hope it works !
There is room for more than one robot. The more, the better. If Emo fails, so be it. But I see no certain proof so far that it will “certainly fail”.
At the moment I feel like what I gave to DDL to improve Vector and for OSKR and Escape Pod was actually a waste of money.
You can only become a “big robotics company” if you tackle that in a professional way. What I saw so far from DDL in regards to use of software development and project management tools as well as professionalism in communication and CRM, I do not believe they will achieve that goal.
There are crm workflows that they promised to get to work since march that can be implemented in less than a day plus two or three days for testing. If a company is not able to do things that simple, I highly doubt that they will become a “big robotics company”.
News !
Emo: The Coolest AI Desktop Pet with Personality and Ideas is the subject of an intellectual property dispute and is not available at this time.
you can read the plaint also of DDL. It is a very interesting read (72 pages)
Kickstarter is stopped….!!!! Again….