Moro is basically a four-foot Amazon Echo with arms
Alexa can't hand you a Coke.
In-home assistants like Amazon Echo and Google Home are handy, but their functions are limited: They can tell you where to find a can of soda, but they can't actually bring one to you. Enter Moro.
Robotics company Ewaybot created Moro as a rolling, humanoid assistant for research labs and universities, and it's currently in a handful of schools across China. Moro is about four feet tall and weighs roughly 77 pounds, and its arms have six points of articulation; they each end in a three-pronged version of a hand that can grip everything from pens to heavy vials. The robot responds to voice communication as well (watch out, Alexa).
Moro uses Intel's RealSense camera to avoid obstacles, plus ultrasound and infrared sensors. It costs $30,000, making it relatively affordable for universities and laboratories. However, that's not where Moro's story is going to end, if Ewaybot gets its way.
Eventually, the company wants to get Moro into households all across the world. When it's ready to roll out the in-home version of Moro, Ewaybot plans to sell it for significantly less than $30,000. The company wants it to be affordable and accessible.
Before that happens, Ewaybot has big plans for Moro. After its debut at CES in Las Vegas, the device is going on a tour of US universities. The company's founders are alumni of Harvard and Carnegie Mellon University, so they have contacts in the academic world and they hope to see Moro in research labs around the nation soon.
Daniel Cooper contributed to this report.
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