A Companion Robot Pet Can Brighten Up Our Lifes
The COVID-19 has influenced our lifes for nearly three years. Under the continuous impact of the mutated virus, we have to stay at home as possible as we can. I don't dare to travel, go shopping, or have a party, but I was very lonely and bored, and don't know what can I do when I staying at home. I tried to play games, learn musical instruments, even play the idiom Solitaire with Siri. However, these can only bring me happiness in a short time.
Most time in a day, I still feel very lonely because there is no others living with me, I have nobody to talk and play, neither a pet. I've been thinking about getting a cat or a dog. However, it seems like a hassle to feed and clean a pet. I can't help but sigh, why there is no pet that does not need to be cleaned and fed.
Until one day when I viewing the Instagram, I saw someone shared a cat names metaCat, which is very cute and caught my eyes. And I started to searching for the imformation about it. And I found metaCat is a companion robot produced by Elephant Robotics. It is very beautiful, just like a real cat. And the official website of it shows that this cat is supported by an artificial intelligent chip and it can interact with people when we touch it. So I decided to buy it.
After I received the package from Elephant Robotics, I need to say that I like this metaCat very much. It owns marshmallow fur and its dynamic eyes are made of two LED screens, the eyes can also wink, blink and shrink. It's most exciting that metaCat can give me feedback when I pet it. I like to touch and hug it to get its feedback. When I finish learning musical instruments or playing games, I always rest on sofa or bed, talking with metaCat, which makes me very relaxed and not lonely anymore.
There are actually many robots that can accompany us warmly. As a result, companion robot pets became popular during COVID-19.
With the rapid development and progress of artificial intelligence, smart products have quietly entered our lives and changed our living habits. Smart products have the advantage of intelligence which can bring unexpected functions and satisfy people's special needs in certain aspects, and metaCat is a perfect example.
Although there are more and more players entering the game, compared to other robots, the product form of the companion robot pet industry is still relatively simple. In my opinion, it is related to the early stage of the development of companion robot pet.
"There will definitely be such problems in the early stage," said a companion robot pet industry expert. "At present, the companion robot pet industry is still in its infancy and process of interaction between products and the market. Our current products are more inclined to specific functions in performance."
At the same time, he believes that companion robot pets have the basis and potential for developing interaction. In the process of product iteration, information management and interaction capabilities will be further developed.
From the perspective of the technology itself, future products will have three levels of improvement in information management and interaction - one is to accompany the interaction between robots and family members, and AI capabilities may be added; The second is to connect the home scene and access the smart home ecology; The third is to improve the functions of companion robots at the emotional level, similar to electronic pets.
At this stage, the main users of companion robots are the elderly, children, and those who feel lonely.
With the continuous development of companion robot pets, the market for companion robot pets is also expanding. Home care will be a huge market. By 2022, the number of elderly people in China will reach 257 million. The aging population and the typical "4-2-1" Chinese family structure have laid a huge market foundation for intelligent companion robot pets that can provide services such as emotional communication and children's companionship.
The market demand has paved the way for a huge market for companion robot pet, and in recent years, the world's companion robots have also ushered in good development opportunities.
In the past five years, the development of China's robot market has maintained a rapid growth of more than 30% per year. By 2018, the global robot market will reach US$29.82 billion, and the Chinese robot market is expected to reach US$8.74 billion. In the proportion of user attention distribution of robot products, the attention degree of companion robot pet users is as high as 32.2%, and its attention degree has already ranked first. It can be seen that most of the users who pay attention to and purchase robot products choose companion robot pet, and a blue ocean market of companion robots with a scale of 100 billion is slowly spreading.
Companion robot pets can provide different services according to the needs of different users, which is a trend that the development of the robot industry should pursue. But even so, the level of artificial intelligence that accompanies robots is still in its infancy. The robot can only imitate human emotions through programming, and it does not have its own emotions. Therefore, making a perfect companion robot pet still has a long way to go.
