There's At Least A Little More Work for Intel to Do On Its HERB Robotic Butler
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2nd of July 2010, 12:47 GMT | By Florin Panaitescu
I know that it's a good idea to start advertising and showing off your developments as soon as possible, but I fail to see what made Intel present it's HERB concept. This is a so-called butler robot, supposed to come serve lazy people from what I can tell.
I mean, all that you'll see in the video bellow is a robotic machine that only hands people a bottle, then takes it and disposes of it. How lazy are we humans supposed to become? That's a little bit discrediting for the human race, in my honest opinion.
Getting to the voice synthesis, I would almost refrain from mentioning it, but I also want to say that I remember some open-source software solutions launched a couple of years ago, that did a better job in that purpose. Taking technology a little more serious, I could see an actual target for the HERB, and by that I'm referring to physically impaired or disabled persons.
They would be the ones that could benefit from such developments, as well as people that are recuperating from severe therapy or surgery and are prescribed not to strain themselves at all. So, ye, it looks like everything has a purpose after all, and the only problem is market placement, as usual.
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