Philips’ Smart Companion is a robot that looks at you, listens and talks to you, nods yes to you and shows a true “personality”.

The device combines computer vision, speech and robotics to interact with users in a natural way, by understanding spoken requests, giving replies, recognizing faces and using body language such as facial expressions, head nodding and shaking or colored light. It even recognizes individual users and can turn its head to follow users as they move around in the room.

Smart Companion is connected to the home PC and the Internet. A user
says, “Dimi, what will the weather be like tomorrow?” and the device initiates a search on the Internet, retrieves the latest information, and communicates it by voice to the user. Photos, music, and movies can be called up with a simple request, such as, “Dimi, please show the pictures from Christmas 2004.”

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