Checking out the latest tech at the BETT Show in London this week, I saw Ohbot's programmable robot heads which can be connected to a camera – but, thanks to AI, they are now also able to talk to each other about cameras...
The company Ohbot offer robotic heads which can easily be programmed by children as young as 7 using a drag-and-drop coding system called Scratch.
Within seconds, the two robot heads were throwing shade at each other’s looks, but not exactly mastering the subtlety of mirrorless vs DSLR – delivering the kind of camera hot takes you’d expect from a salty but very ill-informed YouTube comment section.
The heads themselves can be built as a kit, or bought fully assembled from Amazon, and you'll note that there is a webcam underneath it, and this, too, can be connected to the system very simply – able to 'see' me using AI.
It took a matter of moments to drag and drop the lines of code required to turn the head to follow me as I moved around the area visible to the webcam.
Anyone taking advantage of these tools can program all the motors and lights to turn the heads and eyes. On top of that, there are speakers, so the heads can talk back.
The ability to control the motors, however, is not the extent of the commands available. There is also a selection of commands which can be used to connect to ChatGPT, granting access to the ability to generate responses.
Combining the two takes only a few lines, and with the prompt to have a conversation about cameras.
The demonstrator told me that Ohbot has also added a prompt that gives the bots distinct personalities, which you'll see very clearly if you play the short video above.
One assembled robot head, without webcam, is £269 – around $360 – and is available with a choice of eye iris colors from the manufacturer. The smaller Picoh head is £150 (currently available at Amazon.co.uk, or directly from Ohbot.
I don't know about you, but for now while it's a lot of fun that AI can help robots dislike each other and seemingly criticise each other's appearance, I don't feel they've got enough of a grip on camera categories for me not to want to ask a human for advice when I go camera shopping. Then again, I write about camera tech – I would say that, wouldn't I?
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