We have a soft spot for robots that don’t try to look like people. Mori, from the Singapore startup OKA, goes a step further and doesn’t really try to look like a robot at all. Most of the time it’s a lamp.
It stands just over ten inches tall, with a fabric-wrapped base and a glowing dome on top, a bit like a mushroom from a very tidy forest. Lift the dome and two cartoonish eyes appear underneath, blinking and looking around the room. Tap the top of its head and the face tucks away again, and you’re back to a lamp.
What it does is pretty modest, which is what we like about it. Mori says hello when you walk in. It bobs along when music is playing. It can fill the room with rain, forest or campfire sounds and shift its glow to match, or walk you through a slow breathing exercise. It won’t tell you the weather, set a timer or turn off the kitchen lights, and it doesn’t talk. OKA calls it a nature companion, and told Dezeen they wanted “a familiar object in the home rather than an unfamiliar machine.”
There’s a camera in its nose and microphones inside, which is the part that will give some people pause. OKA says the images and audio are handled on the robot itself and then thrown away, the camera shuts off whenever the dome is down, and a double tap on the head mutes the microphones. It learns the faces it sees most and gets a little shy around strangers, which we find very relatable!
Mori is the first of five objects that OKA founders Hua Wang and Weizhe Chen plan to make, all aimed at pulling us back from our screens. The first run was priced at $649 and has already sold out, with deliveries expected by the end of the year. The regular price is listed at $849, and you can sign up to hear about the next batch on OKA’s site.
If small, friendly robots are your thing, go meet Voxel, the robot butler who’s afraid of water, and Microduck, the robot duck that learns by falling over.
Via Dezeen. Images: OKA.
