A robot that can flip its head takes on a more concrete life this time.
In terms of smart hardware and bodywork, one of the most anticipated products of the year, Beni, is finally on sale.
When I first heard about Beni, it was in the first half of this year that the startup team behind the product, Dynamic Technologies, got multiple rounds of investments from companies such as Apple, Cedar and Merchants. Their two core partners, one is the former CEO of Daejeon, and the other is the former Chief Technology Officer of Daejeon and the core algorithm and control engineer of the Tesla Optimus robotics team.
In August, Hardwire's partner Founder Park organized an AI offline event in Singapore, where Stone's founder, Jason Kon, shared the idea of building "CameraMan" (an imaging robot) at the time, believing that drones might be the best form of imaging robots.
It was the first time I realized that if the image robots were to achieve this goal in the long-term dimension, the opponent of drones could be a new form of hardware device.
At the end of October, I finally got a chance to get an early access to a two-wheeled Beni, a robot smaller than a cat that can jump over its head. More importantly, as a ToC image product, it was able to capture scenes from a "new perspective" that had been difficult for professional human photographers in the past.
On 10 November, Beni was officially launched in the global spot market. The domestic price started at 4999 yuan, and it was almost in the same price range as the Daejeon Mini series drones, slightly lower than the hottest cloud-based camera range this year, although I think the respective use and shooting scenes of these products will almost never completely overlap.
In my opinion, robots like "running and jumping" have rarely been involved in video scenes and rarely entered the 5,000-dollar price range in the ToC consumer market.
After half a month of trying, I want to talk to you about my personal feelings about using it, and some thoughts derived from Beni.
It's the first time I've seen this.
It's all right.
A robot smaller than a catThe first impression Beni gave me was that it was very different from the robot we used to see.
With a weight of less than 2 kg and a length and width of 16.6 x 21.5 x 16.5 cm at the time of official labeling, it is slightly smaller than an unmanned aerial vehicle with a wingspan. Compared to a "conventional robot" at least 60 cm in height, Beni is unlike a typical desktop electronic product when it is stored on the machine, without the need for separate storage space, and will not produce an anonymous "invasive" "biological sense" due to an electrical "machine sensation".
Not only do I think that the cats in our company can approach Beni with confidence, but they can also approach Beni with confidence.
The "employees" at Polaris Park are curious about Beni.
Beni's body as a whole consists of three parts:
First, the "lower leg" consists of a two-wheeled shape, the fastest speed can exceed 28 km/h, which is faster than the maximum speed limit of the new national standard electric bicycle. After practical use, it was discovered that Beni can both drive on paved roads and pass on irregular roads, and can perform more complex movements such as jumping, turning heads, etc. The latter tends to provide emotional value at this stage, while the multi-geographic adaptability can indeed broaden the use of the equipment.
For example, we have Beni walking along a paved grass road in the company's park (a paved path with stone slabs on the grass, with a gap between the slabs and the slabs). Beni's two legs can be automatically compressed and balanced, like a cross-country car, "bottom and hanging", and finally follow the target smoothly through the path.
The middle part of the "body", which is primarily a physical space for batteries, heat exchangers, and obstacle detection cameras.
The "Head" is another core part of Beni, consisting of several parts such as a mechanical cloud platform, a camera, a microSD card slot (Beni also comes with 32GB of internal storage), and the execution of the shooting is largely done in collaboration with these hardware. It uses a 1/1.3-inch CMOS sensor that can capture up to 4K60P video while supporting double electronic focus.
When these hardware capabilities and software algorithms are combined, Beni can automatically track the objects being photographed while moving at its own speed, while relying on mechanical cloud platforms and electronic stabilization to capture images that are both stable and fast. For example, breakthrough moments on a football field, or low-pitched footage on a skating rink. Trust me, these cameras don't look so good even given to human photographers.
Beni used the cameras in several sporting scenes.
It is worth mentioning that besides the body cameras, Beni has also reserved accessory space at the top to expand accessories for other devices such as panoramic cameras that can be connected through screw holes.
This is a picture of Beni with a panoramic camera on the top of his head.
It's the most anticipated "auto-track".In terms of operation, Beni is roughly divided into two modes: manual and automatic.
The manual mode of operation is mainly connected and controlled through the mobile app. In the full-screen operating interface, the camera displays real-time graphics, while there are several sets of buttons to control basic movements such as Beni's position, mechanical cloud platform tilting, jumping and emergency braking. In addition, it also displays key information such as shooting parameters, motion speed, and electricity.
So, if you've ever played drones, it shouldn't take you long to adapt to this operating logic.
However, there are certain actions that require "eating a little bit of operation". The most typical example is "jumping in the middle of the walk". Benny's maximum jump height is more than 25 cm, and he can jump up the stairs and the maruaias. But you have to manually control the running distance and jump time, like when playing a game. We found some colleagues in the company to do a white test, with a success rate of only about 50 percent.
Of course, jumping the stairs in manual mode can also provide a fun way to operate and play the game. As we know, users get to Beni and play "jumping the stairs" together.
In addition to operating the App, the Intelligent Team also provided Beni with a removable wristband tracking, remote-controlled dual-clutch accessory. Users can perform some physical-key operations. However, I personally believe that it is limited to volume size, and it does not significantly improve operations. The official offers an option for external game handle, perhaps a better option.
Beni is a dual-clutch sensor that tracks + remote controls.
In addition to manual operation, "smart tracking" is the most important feature of the "robot" when Beni is in the office.
Simply put, our first test was quite simple and rough. We selected people who needed to be tracked directly at the top of the screen of the mobile app and then mixed them naturally into the complex crowd of 798 parks. Even the sensory tracker mentioned above, which was not worn, gave Beni the added title of "pure visual tracking" in a park.
As a result, Beni almost completely followed his colleague's lead. Whether the other passers-by were scratching around or he was suddenly accelerating, he was able to keep up with the goal.
One of the details that impressed me was that Beni had been knocked over by the park's decelerator once, and when it automatically got up, the colleague he was supposed to track had already "painted out". Then, as observed by humans, Beni swung the mechanical cloud through a small slide to the left to find the target again, and after about three to five seconds, locked the original cameraman back in a circle of people chatting, and continued to complete the follow-up.
At this stage, Beni's smart barrier has a speed limit, and the official App shows that after speeds exceeding 5m/s, "smart barrier will be limited". In fact, when we tested in the park, we did deliberately choose a road blocked by motor vehicles, otherwise Beni would be as fast as an electric bottle car, which is very likely to bother the salesmen.
At the same time, Beni's excellent jumping ability (after all, it can flip its head) is not yet particularly smoothly integrated into its movement. If you want it to go up the stairs with you, you need to manually turn on the "autonomous ladder jump" function. In this mode, Beni's forward speed will decrease accordingly, similar to a car switching from conventional driving mode to overhead mode.
In the Mondo App, there are two settings for avoiding obstacles that need to be activated manually.
Sometimes I feel that Beni is more like a young short-legged cocky dog. On the grass in a deserted village, I can be sure to let it run with me; but if I've been on the road, and it's all kids around me or up the stairs, I still need to hold it up or stare at it.
Therefore, the first generation of Beni should not be expected to be a "full-body" robot, but rather a companion pet that is still growing every day.
Exploration of mass production from the scene of the fragmentationAs we discussed so much about sports-related "fitness", we'll end up talking about Beni's "fitness to shoot".
First of all, before I experienced Beni with my colleagues and friends around me, I did hear a lot of questioning and even speculation.
My answer is: If you're expecting Beni to have a static face, like a camera, a flagship phone, or a cloud-based camera, it's definitely not the best option.
But the camera category has never been just a scene and function of "taking good people's faces". In introducing the product, the animation team positioned Beni as: filling the void of autonomous moving images on the ground.
The phrase is a bit of a nuisance to understand, but I prefer to think of Beni as a "drone on the ground" and is particularly suitable for both family and urban sporting scenes at this stage.
Family scenes, previously both parent and pet scenes, were almost impossible to capture in the "long-term frames" because either one person had to carry a camera or a fixed position made it difficult to achieve full follow-up.
After some time of my own experience, I found that Beni had an innate advantage in photographing pets. In the past, it was difficult for us to capture the perspective of a pet. If we wanted to capture a picture of a pet, pets would often run away excitedly, and it would be difficult to capture a natural expression or a steady perspective. But perhaps because of Beni's small shape, it could record pets in the home from a "point of view" to a "stranger of the same kind", or a precious expression of curiosity or rage.
It's worth mentioning that Beni's light weight and the stability of the two-wheel-drive design (more noise from traditional foot robots) also made me want to use it indoors.
Beni captured an angry moment in the life of a cowardly cat.
There may be a greater demand for outdoor and sporting scenes. However, please note that the "outdoor sports" here are not hiking, cross-country running, as mentioned earlier.
Better suited to Beni, are single-person footage in urban sports, most typically skateboarding, dancing and tennis. Beni currently has built-in rear-tracking, side-tracking, 360-degree rotation and other modes of operation, with automatic tracking functionality, in a relatively fixed scene, to more easily capture images that were not previously captured by professional photographers + stabilizers.
Beni was shot in multiple scenes. Image source: Mondo
You may think that this is not a scenario and demand for the masses. However, the growth and development of a brand new in the field of consumer hardware is almost entirely driven by the clear problem of solving the vertical segmentation scenario. For entrepreneurs, the path to finding new technologies for PMF is often not direct competition with giants in mature and tight categories.
From this perspective, Beni's "ground-to-surface robotics" path to development and drone photography can find some common ideas. As the pioneer of the consumer-level drone circuit, Djiang's path was to first solve technical problems such as flight control, cloud platforms, and then to find a scenario for drones that leads to the consumer market; while Beni also explored the frontiers of robotics technology, he found a segment of scenery that was not yet covered by video equipment.
Before writing this article, Hardwire had a brief conversation with the ToC team. One of our most curious questions was whether ToC was a hardware company or a video company, and Beni was the team's first PMF exploration of physical technology in the field of ToC.
Regardless of the future growth trajectory, I think it's an interesting exploration. The concept of the body has been burning for years, and neither should it be just a demo presentation, nor do I want the imagination of the application to be confined to the limited scenes of companionship, retirement, etc.
During the pre-sales, Beni received nearly 8,000 crowdfunding orders on Kickstarter, the platform's highest-grossing single in the consumer-grade robot category. With physical intelligence, this seemingly limitless and somewhat distant new technology is ushering in an important volume turnover moment today.
* Source: Hardwire This article is for the original Hardwire article and can be downloaded from the comments section below.
