Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Emerging Tech
  3. News

Always wanted a personal robot? Misty II to ship in April for $2,400

Kelly Hodgkins
By
Misty - Where are the Robots?

It’s been nearly a year since Sphero, the company known best for making lovable Star Wars droids into connected toys, announced that it would be spinning off a new startup, Misty Robotics, that’s dedicated to bringing robot assistants to smart homes. And now, we’re getting our first chance to bring one of these bots into our homes.  At CES 2019, the company announced that its adorable Misty II robots are ready to ship in April 2019 with a starting price tag of $2400, according to TechCrunch.

Recommended Videos

Misty first showed off the new Misty II, a slightly more advanced version of the original Misty robot the company debuted at CES in January 2018. As per Misty’s landing page for the bot, the Misty II is “professional grade, hardware-extensible, and purpose-built as a development platform.” Meant for developers of both the amateur and professional variety, the Misty II promises to be “easy to make powerful,” but is DIY enough to keep robotics fans interested.

More CES 2019 coverage

At six pounds and just over a foot tall (14 inches, to be exact), the Misty II is a relatively small robot and meant for either the home or the office. It comes complete with a number of features that can help it safely navigate these scenarios, including a 3D Occipital sensor for mapping, a 4K Sony camera for facial and object recognition, and eight sensors to help avoid obstacles.

But what Misty II actually does for its owners is completely up to them. Depending on how the robot is programmed, it could serve as a security guard, tasked with investigating strange noises or opening the door; or as an extra pair of hands for mom and dad, checking in on children to ensure they’ve completed their chores. Ultimately, Misty wants its customers to dream up applications for the Misty II that the company itself can’t even conceive of. After all, the company’s goal is to put a robot in every home, which means that its robots will have to be able to execute a wide range of tasks.

To program Misty II, users can leverage a block-based programming interface Misty developed itself, as well as JavaScript APIs to create new skills or integrations with third-party services like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. Misty II also has two Qualcomm SnapDragon processors running Windows IoT Core and Android 8 operating systems.

Topics
Kelly Hodgkins
Kelly Hodgkins
Contributor
Kelly's been writing online for ten years, working at Gizmodo, TUAW, and BGR among others. Living near the White Mountains of…
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

Read more
Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards
Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Read more
AI turned Breaking Bad into an anime — and it’s terrifying
Split image of Breaking Bad anime characters.

These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.

Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."

Read more