Anki Vector: Autonomous mini robot with charm and its own SDK put to the test
It is something between WALL-E, R2-D2 and Tamagotchi. But is Anki's Vector as big a step forward for robotics as the manufacturer claims?
"A toy robot the size of a hamster? What nonsense!"
[Vector rolls into view]
"OMG, he's so cute!!! Take my money!"
This is how many of my colleagues' first encounters with Anki's new mini robot "Vector" went. The chirping caterpillar robot simulates a surprising number of emotions with its lovingly animated eyes, head and shovel arm movements: Vector is happy when it recognizes people, shies away from table edges in fear, coos contentedly when stroked, closes its eyes to sleep and snores peacefully. If it notices movement in its immediate surroundings, it wakes up and moves away from its charging station to investigate the source of the movement or to play with its cube.
In fact, when the mini-robot was released in October 2018, the asking price of over 250 euros was an obstacle for many people to buy Vector. In the meantime, however, the price for Vector has fallen dramatically. The background: manufacturer Anki has been insolvent since April 2019 (see box). Nevertheless, the little robot "lives on".
Anki had to cease production of its robots in April 2019, meaning that Vector never officially went on sale in Germany. In the course of the insolvency, Anki promised to continue operating the cloud services required for Vector, but there is no guarantee of this:
"We are taking steps to assure that customers will continue to enjoy continued use of our products. In order to provide long term support of our products, Anki has contracted our most senior leaders and hands-on engineers across all the technical areas involved in maintaining the operation and functionality in the existing products and apps. [...] Vector is the only product with a notable cloud component, and the contracted team is heavily staffed in that area." (Statement from the Anki website, May 2019)
In December 2019, the US company Digital Dream Labs acquired the rights to Vector and other previous Anki products (Cozmo, Overdrive) and promises not only to continue operating the cloud service server, but also to produce new Vector models. In addition, Digital Dream Labs wants to develop a "rescue capsule" to decouple Vector from the cloud constraints and develop an open-source bootloader to actually run code directly on the robot - so far it is only controlled remotely (see main text).
We tested the European version that is already available in the UK and can be ordered from various online stores. The imported Vector only speaks English, but can be used worldwide thanks to its USB charging station. Anki does not supply a separate power supply unit, so you have to fall back on an existing one.
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A long press on its back switches on the robot, which raises its head and opens its eyes after booting. The initial setup requires the Vector Robot app for iOS (or the Vector Robot app for Android). A Bluetooth connection is established with the smartphone or tablet to connect the robot to the WLAN (2.4 GHz), view photos taken by Vector or delete learned faces. Anki justifies the need for a 2.4 GHz WLAN with lower power consumption and greater range than the 5 GHz band.
Once connected to the Internet via WLAN, Vector can manage on its own – as long as it finds its way back to its charging station before the battery runs out. In our test, Vector lasted a maximum of half an hour before it had to make a pit stop. Vector also remains active in the charging station; after ten minutes it is ready for mobile use again.
Technical inner workings & sensors
Vector's predecessor "Cozmo" already had plenty of charm. However, its "artificial intelligence" was entirely contained in its companion app on the smartphone or tablet due to a lack of its own computing power.
Vector's brain, on the other hand, is the Qualcomm APQ8009 processor, whose four Cortex-A7 cores provide enough power for the robot to analyze the data from its sensors autonomously.
Thanks to the built-in inertial sensor (measurement of acceleration, position, rotation rates) and infrared laser scanner, Vector explores its surroundings using Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). This works down to the centimetre for simple manoeuvres – as long as the robot is not knocked off course by an obstacle. If an object is placed in Vector's path that it cannot overcome, Vector continues in the wrong direction and does not correct its course accordingly. Apparently, the robot firmware does not check the direction of travel continuously, but only at pre-calculated waypoints where Vector has to change direction.
The infrared laser scanner installed under Vector's 720p head camera for distance measurement has a resolution down to the millimeter range. To prevent Vector from falling from a great height, there are also infrared sensors in all four corners of the underbody. They do a good job; during our test, Vector only once maneuvered itself into a situation where it almost toppled off the desk.
While Cozmo didn't even have its own microphone (the smartphone or tablet had to be used for this), Vector's back features an array of four microphones that use beamforming to determine the direction from which the robot was approached so that it turns to the person speaking.
Also integrated into the back is a gold-colored capacitive touch sensor, which Vector uses to register whether it is being stroked.
