e497 — Rise of the Robots | Games At Work dot Biz

Apple Image Playground generated image: robot holding a sock, January 2025

Published 13 January 2025

e497 with Michael, Michael and Andy on #CES2025, #robots, #socks, #AI, #TalkingMoose, #ZaphodBeeblebrox, #LanguageLocalization, #LEGO and a whole lot more!

Michael, Michael and Andy are back in full co-host force once again, covering the robotics-filled CES innovations hitting the feeds this week.

The team starts things off this episode discussing a TechCrunch article covering Nvidia’s R2X avatar. The user experience for this avatar is through the computer desktop with a humanlike embodiment to provide assistance to users, seeing what they see on the desktop, or ingesting documents. This reminds Michael R of the Reallusion Crazytalk capability (discussed way back in e35 in 2013), Andy of Microsoft’s Clippy, and Michael M of the Talking Moose. The R2X puts “a face on agentic AI” according to Nvidia’s press release, and it is easy to imagine how Clippy, the Talking Moose or other embodiments might be a similar face.

Moving from virtual to physical, it is clear that CES2025 is chock full of robots, for all manner of purposes.

The uncanny valley resurfaces with the Realbotix humanoid robot Melody. The facial and body movements of the robot resemble human natural movement, but are still far enough away to create the emotional discrepancy described by the uncanny valley. In addition, Andy makes the point that the reported open source nature of the robot and its code does not appear to be substantiated.

Moving along from the humanoid form factor to other robots, there are many robot examples whose purpose is to vacuum, mop, deliver drinks or even pick up socks. Check out the show notes below for some of the CES robots, from those that attach to purses, to those that cool your tea.

Michael R shares a project he’s been working on dealing with language localization – check out the link below for more details.

Wrapping things up for the episode, the co-hosts turn to a couple LEGO innovations: the latest in the Nintendo-LEGO partnership, and an intriguing Hackaday omni-directional treadmill.

What tasks would you want a robot to do for you? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know!