This robot companion is a cameraman for your pet
Tech companies have long offered pet cameras as a way to find out what your furball is up to when you’re not home. Vex, a new robot companion launched at CES this week, goes even further: it follows your pet everywhere, films as you go, and uses artificial intelligence to stitch together a video from the footage.
Vex is a small white sphere with cute, chunky limbs, ears, and accessories in a range of colors. It’s compact enough to hold in one hand, so it will almost certainly be smaller than the animal you want to film.
It’s autonomous enough to follow your cat or dog around the house and play with them, and uses visual recognition to identify specific animals. He films as he goes, capturing low-angle footage that should come a little closer to your pet’s point of view, and cuts each day’s footage into “moving narratives and shareable stories.” Manufacturer FrontierX hasn’t shared an example of these edited images, however, which will be the real test of whether it’s worth it.
He’s joined by Aura, a larger spherical robot with a circular face shield. It’s being sold more as a robot companion for people, with the ability to read body language and facial expressions to understand your mood. Like Vex, it can follow you anywhere and even talk to you using conversational features powered by LLM.
Both Vex and Aura are still in development – FrontierX is at such an early stage that it doesn’t even have a website live yet, just a simple Instagram page. Nonetheless, the company says it will be ready to accept pre-orders within the next six months, although it did not specify how much either robot will cost.
