«In all the houses there will be a robot that takes care of us»

International companies strive to show the most human face of these assistants who teach to program children, give company to the elderly or make video calls

     Lately, a recurring theme has been current every few years: robots will take away the work of humans in the near future. On many occasions you have an apocalyptic vision of them but the reality is that, at least today, they help society much more than harm it. In the framework of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) that takes place these days in Barcelona, ​​international companies have taken the opportunity to present their novelties in assistance robots that help humans.

Some take a step further and see a future full of humanoid robots to help us out at home. "All households will have a humanoid robot that takes care of us and helps us with domestic chores," Rosa Liu, senior accountant at IEI Group, said Monday. His company has launched AfoBot , a domestic computer connected to the Internet that measures the vital signs of users, allows video calls and control through it the rest of connected devices in the house.


      This robot has a screen that rotates 360º and is based on Android 6.0, so it is open to developers to expand the possibilities of the device with the integration of new 'apps'. At the moment, it is sold in the United States and China at a price of around $ 500. For the arrival to our country they are looking for distributors.

Another system presented was Robelf , oriented to family life especially for the care and companionship of the elderly and children. It is a robot with a more human form, which adapts to the height of the user and can sit and lift. It has a voice recognition system with noise cancellation, which allows you to communicate better with older people and young children.


     With this idea of ​​accompanying the children, Jibo has also been presented , the first social robot for the home of Everis and NTT Data, whose objective is to be integrated into the day-to-day lives of their owners. The application 'Be a Maker' (open-source) launched in Barcelona allows children to program real interactions with the robot. Jibo reacts through expressive responses and movements and has an advanced processing of natural language, voice technology and facial recognition. "Jibo can build relationships with the people he interacts with the most," Cynthia Breazeal, creator of the robot and professor at MIT, said in an interview.

It is, therefore, a social robot in which technology and entertainment come together. On its rounded shape, the creator explains that they wanted it to have a shape that children could recognize as a pet or a friend, but "that does not resemble a human being so that they clearly differentiate who is who".


And in this world of robots that are friends of humans , Pepper , one of the most mediatic ones, could not miss . SoftBank, its creators, define it as a "proactive, attractive and interactive" assistant. It is designed for professional environments in which it is naturally integrated by its friendly forms. "Pepper offers a very good experience with the real world adding value to a location," they say from SoftBank.

     Other of its most outstanding characteristics are its "emotional empathy, its connectivity and the high degree of personalization", which allows hundreds of companies to incorporate it for very different uses. Among them is Nescafé and Carrefour, which have placed Pepper in some of their stores to help the customer decide on their purchases and give them information about products; airports such as Munich and hotels in the United States and Japan where complements the receptionists with tourist information to visitors.