I’ve yet to walk the entire floor at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year (that’s the goal for this afternoon), but my sense is the majority of the robots present fit into one of two categories: robot vacuums or greeter robots. With Pepper out of commission, maybe there’s a wide-open market there. Who knows?
The two Xiaomi robots — CyberOne and CyberDog — may well have been the most prominent of the show, and neither were especially inspiring. It was fun finally seeing the Cyber One in person after writing about it seven months ago. The humanoid robot’s stilted locomotion screamed “research prototype” in the first demo, and I’m plenty wary about phone makers getting “serious” about robotics. There was no demo in the booth this year, rendering it more of an expensive mechanical mannequin.
