Vector ‘the Good Robot’ made a bit of a splash when it was first launched in October, and now the four-inch robot will be integrating with Amazon’s Alexa.
The creators of Vector, Anki, announced in a blog post today that as of December the artificial intelligence-powered robot will get an upgrade that allows users to connect to Alexa right through their Vector units.
“We’ve been working with Amazon to make it happen, and today, we’re happy to reveal that the integration will be launching in time for the holidays,” stated Meghan McDowell, director of program management for Anki in the blog post, noting that this upgrade has been the most requested feature.
In December Vector owners in Canada and the U.S. will be able to speak to Alexa through Vector. The new feature will become available to other countries in the new year.
“Simply talk to Vector like you’d talk to Alexa and schedule reminders, search for information, control smart home devices, and more,” stated the post.
A blend between a toy and a smart home device, Vector was launched to mixed reviews. Anki called the robot its “move into the home robotics industry.” However, Vector still has many toy-like qualities such as playing blackjack, interacting with its building block-esque toy and dancing to music.
Since its launch on October 12 Anki says there have been more than 5 million voice queriers to Vector devices, it has performed more than 700,000 fist bumps, 227,000 dance parties and travelled more than 2,800 kilometres.
Vector is cloud-connected and has built-in machine learning capabilities, which means it is supposed to continually learn, and be upgraded. In the blog post, Anki also stated that later this month it will release an automatic upgrade to all its Vector units that will add new features, improve animations, as well as cliff detection.
If you want to learn more about Vector and see what it’s like to live with an artificial intelligence-powered robot check out our full review here.
