What a cool NEO video. No, he’s not the Neo from the Matrix, you have to see him: he walks slowly, smiles without a mouth, bends his head as if he understands you, opens doors, takes objects delicately, does everything (almost). NEO, the new humanoid robot from Norwegian 1X Technologies (the one also financed by OpenAI) seems ready to enter your home and tidy up your kitchen and rearrange your drawers and wash your dishes and vacuum and do everything you need, with a smart and user friendly face, less disturbing than Caterina from Io e caterina. They present it like this: “NEO takes on the boring and mundane tasks around the house so you can focus on what matters to you”. All perfect, except that, as you read more, you discover that it does almost none of this.
After thinking “oh, how I wish I did”, I went to the official website, and wow: past the images from science fiction films with promises from an IKEA catalog (the style is very IKEA), and NEO with an elderly man, and NEO with a child, come the lines with asterisks: “For any chore that NEO doesn’t yet know, you can schedule a 1X Expert to guide it.” Translated: if the robot doesn’t know how to do it, they’ll have a human do it for you who guides it remotely. Huh? Well yes. One that is there and pilots it for you remotely.
There is a list of ready-made tasks: opening doors, turning lights on and off, carrying objects, basic actions, and even there with caution, as they specify that “NEO grows in abilities with every software update”. That is, for now he doesn’t do them, he promises to do them.
In practice, the viral videos show synthetic smiles and arms that move delicately in a futuristic environment and you discover that behind it there is a human operator who remotely controls the movements to prevent the robot from tripping or confusing the table with the refrigerator. In other words, what you are watching in the videos and on the site is not an autonomous robot: it is a radio-controlled robot, remote-controlled in real time by an operator with a VR viewer and controller. Nice direction, also very IKEA but pleasant, clean futurism, very clean. He certainly does a little something, maybe yes, maybe no, Gabriele D’Annunzio would say. (It is the same technology already used in their previous model, EVE, used in warehouses and hospitals, and NEO was designed as its “living room” evolution).
NEO is beautiful, the site too, they just don’t yet know how to make it work or if it will work, it needs to be trained in real homes, house by house, but in short we’re talking about twenty thousand euros, not bad.
Because then and there I thought: ah, AI and robotics will also take away many people’s jobs, but new jobs will arise, like twenty thousand euros to test a robot. No, with twenty thousand euros you can pre-order it, as it is, as it will be, as it won’t be, it’s your business.