> Teddy’s Intelligence comes from a GPT conversational model and its custom-developed skills.

It's not going to be the sort of intelligence people are expecting, GPT is still just an algorithm mimicking understanding. You need to manage expectations better.

> Teddy’s freedom of movement comes from its 13 reactive Servo Motors with 19 DOFs.

In the picture it shows the robot holding a bottle. It won't do this very easily at all, especially a smooth bottle.

> Teddy’s Empathy comes from mood-tracking the owner and trying to influence his mood through AI.

Handy-wavy use of empathy - this has not yet been solved.

> We now want to develop some basic apps for Teddy. What would you build on top of it?

Unfortunately you will never get this thing to walk on all surfaces reliably. Bipedal walking is exceptionally difficult and your robot is going to fall over - a lot. Those Dynamixel motors will give out really quickly (the large gears). Your customers are not going to continue paying $100 a month after the first month when this thing breaks.

And this is the least of your worries. There are problems I am sure you are yet to even consider. For example, this thing weighs 2.3kg (5lbs). The motors need to at least be 15kg/cm (I'm guessing AX12). Their stall current will be upwards of 1A. 10 servos in stall condition (legs trapped for example) could be drawing 10A. But you can switch off the motors under special conditions? Then you need to handle back EMF (which will fry all of your motors). This thing is potentially a fire hazard.

My recommendation is to pivot towards a teddy puppy. Walking is easier (larger numbers of ground contacts), less motors (cheaper), less expectation of intelligence, etc. You can save on production costs and ship with a cheaper SBC, smaller battery (dog walk motions can be more efficient), reduce the cost of your platform and get more of your monthly instalments before the thing requires maintenance.

Thank you for pointing out the privacy policy/tos issue, we'll definitely solve that in the coming days :)

I'm sure you couldn't offer the robot for $100, but does everybody you're trying to interest understand that.

I was also commenting on the "first humanoid" statement, so with these issues, I'd suggest you spend a bit of time working on your language and marketing and making sure you're being clear. Don't let little issues like this destroy your credibility and harm your product.

You can be clear AND get interest.

I hope my comments aren't coming across as negative, that's not the point, the point is to try to help because these are some issues that I find are destroying your credibility with me.

The price is $3000 and the $100 fee is the deposit to pre-order Teddy, so we're definitely going to clarify that.

All of the feedback we got on here is a goldmine for us and we're making sure to address all of the points stated by you and others. Our main focus for the following weeks just became changing the eyes and building up credibility, and we couldn't have thought of that without all the criticism we got on this thread

Don't pretend to be something you are not. You are far from the first humanoid robot. You sound foolish, or insincere claiming to be the first.

I'm not suggesting that Pepper is the first, there was probably a consumer robot before Pepper too, and I'm guessing they've now pivoted.

I think if you can find another label than just "the first" that might help your business, as I think lots of people will question that statement, and it just isn't worth the argument. Being first isn't that big a deal.

Aren't sex robots also consumer? I'd think so. I'm not going to post NSFW links here, but the links aren't at all what I expected.

Have you looked / interacted with Pepper and Nao robots? In my experience, Aldebaran Robotics tried hard to go down the "lifelike robot" route, and the issues they encountered are real and hard problems.

A big problem with body control was lack of touch / impact feedback. Do you have plans to integrate sensors on the robot's 'skin'?

Modern ML based perception is expensive (audio, visual, NLP, etc). Modern ML-based full-body planning even more so. Do you intend to go down a hand-crafted route for walking, gestures, grasping, or do you intend to do it all with ML?

We've looked and interacted with Pepper, but they're distant from what we're building. They've got more of a research purpose, we are going full-blown social robot.

For the sensors, we're using the feedback we've got from all the 19 servo motors since they're closed-loop servos.

For the ML part, all the visual perception is being done the Jetson and only the audio and NLP is off-loaded towards the cloud. For the body planning, it's all developed through inverse kinematics and dynamic balancing ... no need for ML :)

Btw, like others have said, it's a bit creepy looking. I didn't realize someone could make a teddy bear and somehow make it look cold and murderous but bravo. If you're going to make a teddy bear, at least make it look soft and cuddly. And give the eyes some life to them please

App ideas:

Diagnostics and Repair: to it can help you take itself apart and put itself back together.

BearSwarm/BeoBaer: connect multiple Bear together into a cooperative unit

Bear8s: load balance those units!

WarBear: If these work and only cost $3000 a pop, you can expect the Army to want some.

Thanks for the app ideas! (besides the WarBear one lol)

Fetching important medications, water and nourishment for those with limited mobility; Answering door; going outside to check on noises; other telepresence applications with VR linkup to the humanoid's cameras and other sensors.

Which GPT are you using with Teddy? When do you expect you will have the first live demo videos? What do you use for conversational technology - STT/TTS, NLU?

Also, if you could please share your social media so that I can follow your progress. Thank you.

For the conversational stack this is our flow: STT -> GPT -> TTS (on Tacotron2)

Following are our social media account: https://www.facebook.com/animaroboticsofficial https://www.instagram.com/teddy.anima

The accounts are still pretty empty, but we will start activelly creating content from January 2022 onwards :)

> What would you build on top of it?

I'd go for something big and heavy...

It would actually be interesting to know how to interpret the usage of AI in the context of GDPR. Since the purpose of the processing must be pre-determined, yet with AI the data collected may be used for a purpose determined by the AI. Also "mood-tracking" will certainly fall under article 9 - special categories. You might end up in a situation where you have to delete all previous data and renew the consent every time someone installs a new "app".