Qbo is not the first robot to recognise its reflection – that honour goes to a bot called Nico – but it is possibly the cutest. The open-source robot is equipped with two cameras that give it stereoscopic vision and is programmed with facial and object recognition software.
What’s slightly more unnerving/awesome about this isn’t that Qbo can do this, it’s that they’ve given it such wonderfully humanising syntax. There’s no need for it beyond the aesthetic, and it’s interesting to see – from a psychological point of view – how far a little detail-work in that area can go in helping us relate to what is actually just very nifty programming.
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