Courtesy of 1X
Courtesy of 1X
“We love the idea that a robot can be such a peaceful and fun and stupidly safe presence in life,” says Dar Sleeper, 1X’s vice president of product and design. “Something that feels comfortable to be around, something that’s soft from the inside out. If you want something that fits into your life, that doesn’t feel like it’s from a whole different universe.”
judgment day
1X says the goal is full automation for Neo, but for now, the robot is partially teleoperated, as reported in a Wall Street Journal video last year. This means human operators can control Neo remotely and even look through the camera to see the space around them. It’s actually a feature called Expert Mode, which aims to handle more complex tasks by bringing a human into the loop. This also means that if someone is in your house, they can see everything around them.
This starts getting weird because, if Neo’s advertising is anything to go by, 1X is pretty sure you’ll also want to have sex with its robot. The marketing of Neo’s new fingers is very sensual. Smooth jazz plays in the background of the slow, warm-lit video. Robot points move around wine glasses, turn off lights, open jackets and gently caress some grapes. In previous commercials, humans stand very close to Neo and look at him flirtatiously.
I don’t mean to embarrass if you’re interested in this, but it’s a very strange strategy to sell a robot that can also become a portal for random human operators to see and interact with everything in your home. 1X says human “experts” can only enter your home if you specifically request it. You can also monitor the video they are capturing through the mobile app. A ring light around Neo’s ear turns blue to indicate someone is connected, and you can pull out the expert at any time. 1X did not immediately respond to questions about how the company plans to prevent bad actors or hackers from taking over the robot.
The other problem with the human element is that it is not yet possible to tell how well these actuators and hand movements work. When asked whether the videos were created by machine automation or someone controlled them remotely, a 1X representative wrote that “some videos are machine-articulated while some are driven to show the upper limits of hardware capabilities.” The video of Neo lifting a weight with a slow, back-and-forth finger movement is an actual, fully automated capability of the robot. But the video of Neo demonstrating American Sign Language is not and has been remotely operated by a human.
WIRED, on a Zoom call with Terfurth and Sleeper, had a fully automated Neo robot standing behind the two. Sleeper asked him to show how fast he could move his fingers. Neo slowly lifted one finger at a time and then lowered it. Then it started getting faster – and faster and faster, until the fingers started playing so fast that they blurred together on the screen. It looked like it was going almost so fast that Sleeper started barking at it to stop. The robot froze. Later, it showed me a peace sign.
