The Chinese tech giant Baidu has unveiled a smart speaker and two home robots at its annual Baidu World event. The smart speaker, Raven H, is voice-activated and connects to a variety of Baidu-Raven home devices. It looks totally different from other smart speakers such as Amazon Echo or Google Home. Instead, Raven H looks like a pile of colourful plastic squares. It is due to go on sale in China next month. The two home robots, named Raven R and Raven Q, use the same speaker functions as the smart speaker but can also move about. Raven R has six joints that allow for complex movements and the expression of emotion. The more secretive Raven Q has not yet been revealed to the public as it is still in development. It will apparently “integrate multiple technologies such as simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM), computer vision, voice recognition and natural language processing”. In a statement, Baidu said: “These smart speakers and AI home robots… will help people's everyday lives and bring them an experience once only seen in sci-fi movies”.
