Misty II image : Misty Robotics

The Misty II, a personal robot developed by robotics startup Misty which non-technical owners can program using a custom visual block-based programming interface, will be available for purchase April this year for $2,399, a four months delay from its initially proposed released date (the 4th of December).

Beginning April, customers can get their hands on the robot which would come installed with pre-set skills to get them started on use. Those with programming experience will be able to utilize JavaScript APIs to create more skills and mods such as integration with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Microsoft Cognitive Services and other Cloud APIs.

Skills the Misty II can perform out of the box include:

• Recognize faces
• Create a 3D map of her surroundings
• Autonomous movement
• Receive and respond to commands
• Locate its charger to charge itself
• Display emotive eyes and other emotional characteristics 
• Perform seeing, hearing, and speaking capabilities

Misty II image : Misty Robotics

Its features include an advanced 3D sensor for mapping, eight special sensors for obstacle avoidance, a 4K Sony camera for object and facial recognition, and two Qualcomm SnapDragon processors running Android 7 and Windows IoT Core operating systems. It’s also fully capable of running Tensorflow, Caffe, and WindowsML within hardware optimized runtimes.

Owners can also take advantage of downloadable skills created by Misty Robotics or community developers, which are available Misty’s Github repository, They’ll also be able to physically expand the robot with custom hardware developed by Misty.