If you're a parent, you probably dread the thought of missing an important moment in your child's life. Do you really want to be in the other room when your little one takes those first steps? Mayfield Robotics thinks it can be there even when you can't. It's adding yet another feature to its upcoming Kuri home robot that will record moments independently. The tiny companion will use a mix of machine learning and image recognition to determine when it should start capturing video, using your preferences as a guide. Ideally, this will catch your kids' playtime or an impromptu dance party without asking you to lift a finger -- and the more it records, the more it should understand your tastes.
It's easy to be skeptical of the Vision feature, since it's hard to know just how well this will work or what Kuri will consider a video-worthy moment. Is it going to capture occasions you'll cherish forever, or is it going to record your vacuuming? You can specify when and where Kuri is allowed to record, so it shouldn't immortalize anything scandalous, but you may end up with a lot of mundane footage on your hands.
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/01/kuri-vision/
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday August 02 2017, @09:43AM (2 children)
"impromptu dance party", hah! "Nookie on the sofa" or "jumping into fan", or "smashing tv onto brother's head"
This thing will start to get subpaoena'd by insurance companies, then you won't be allowed to turn it off.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Wednesday August 02 2017, @10:49AM
The robot could assume that you'd want "the making of" to show to the baby later in its life...
"One more take!"
"Director's cut?"
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Wednesday August 02 2017, @11:59AM
You will be sued by the music-business for copyright infringement because of the "dance" song in the background. Then, you will get a cease-and-desist letter from the film/video-business, and subsequently get sued, for copyright infringement of the script you are playing out.
This is a business opportunity for the media-industry! They can now easily prove that you are misappropriating their precious property.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Virindi on Wednesday August 02 2017, @10:33AM (3 children)
I would more dread the thought of every moment of my child's life being recorded and parsed by big, unaccountable entities. Getting footage of baby's first steps is minor in comparison.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 02 2017, @12:43PM
Yeah, somehow humans managed to get along for thousands of years without recording the first steps of their children.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 02 2017, @01:57PM (1 child)
Given how freely people already upload this sort of thing to Facebook, I think we're in the minority.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 02 2017, @07:33PM
Yup, people are idiots. Had a couple who I told not to post their baby's pics on FB and they are anti-tech hippy types who were all like "yeah yeah of course!" Turns out they were humoring me, and now their baby's first years of life will be recorded and owned by FB. People are idiots, people are lazy, convenience totally wins. I guess it is way beyond most people to understand they are contributing to the downfall of society and giving tacit acceptance of the surveillance state.
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Wednesday August 02 2017, @12:20PM
Assuming for a moment that somehow a corporation doesn't stand to gain from the massive video archive it could accrue...
Would you want to be the child that was being recorded, 10-20 years later? You have an hour of video of you in some archive, for every day of your life, for your first 10 years.
Would your parents use that responsibly; do they just want to "d'aww" all day, or are they doing something like stalking you? How do you know they didn't leak this information and betray things you considered private, but that they did not, long before you were even aware of such things, and now that video is out there on the internet with your name all over it when you're running for Senator?
I sadly have some personal experience with this, but in my case, the videotapes were physical things with no copies, my parents were quite disagreeable with me about who they shared them with, and there was this yearly bonfire festival nearby...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday August 02 2017, @12:42PM (2 children)
exactly where Kuri is sending all those data.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Wednesday August 02 2017, @01:38PM (1 child)
Why, the "Cloud" of course. Where else would it go?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 02 2017, @07:38PM
Internal SD card with a USB interface to dump the data.
I know you were being facetious, but its about time we started pointing out how terrible "the cloud" really is. Convenient, yes. Privacy invading, also yes. Worth it? Fuck no.