Mykie the Robot

If it’s a home robot, it needs a purpose.

Today, I met Mykie — a robot being displayed by Siemens at IFA. Mykie looks and acts a lot like Jibo. Maybe this is copying, maybe this is mimicry, or maybe it’s just the natural path of robot evolution.

What seems a bit different about Mykie vs Jibo is that Mykie has a singular purpose — to be a kitchen countertop cooking aid.

I saw Mykie being used in at a different even booth later in the day, alongside professional chefs. It’s sole job was to provide recipes and look up food information.

This seems like an important point — if you’re going to create a robot, it has do at least one thing really well so that it can make an inroad. Otherwise, if it’s many dull knives, it won’t get traction.

We’ll see if Mykie ever makes it to market but it seems the form factor and that it needs to have one really good purpose are traits that will stick.