Aeolus is the smart home robot of my dreams
I was hoping to find Rosie the Robot at CES. I found Rosie the Robot.
Last year, I saw a lot of cool robots at CES . With their pieces combined, I thought we could make a pretty good approximation of Rosie the Robot from "The Jetsons." To me, that's the ideal end for a smart home robot: one that can clean for you, pick up after you and watch over your home when you can't. Aeolus can do all of those things. Rosie the Robot has arrived at CES 2018.
To be fair, this Rosie's still a prototype, but it's a working prototype. Right now, it can grab objects and hand them to you. It can hold a vacuum and clean your floor. It can learn different objects and where they go. In theory, it'll be able to clean your floors. By learning your objects, it'll be able to pick up a room.
Aeolus can even act as a security robot. It has cams that can learn your face and let you know when something's out of place. Aeolus is mobile so it can patrol a floor. Aeolus even has Amazon's assistant Alexa built in so you can talk to it. Aeolus is awesome.
It's also humongous and probably much less practical than an ordinary DIY smart home setup or a more consumer-ready upcoming bot like Kuri. My dreams for how cool Aeolus could be might all turn into nothing more than wishful thinking.
Given its size and range of abilities, it'll also be prohibitively expensive. Company reps wouldn't even give me a price, only "as much as a family trip overseas." Ouch. Still, I'm going to dream on, because Aeolus is everything I want in a smart home robot.
CES 2018: CNET's complete coverage of tech's biggest show.
The Smartest Stuff: Innovators are thinking up new ways to make you, and the things around you, smarter.