Shenzhen, China-based Avatar Controls, a maker of smart home products, is launching its Eywa E1 Smart Home Security Robot at CES 2017, and it has a striking resemblance to Jibo.
LAS VEGAS – Criticize Jibo all you want, but the social robot certainly has admirers.
In late December 2016 a tipster alerted us to EBGbot, a Chinese company advertising the Oding robot that looks remarkable similar to Jibo. Now another Chinese company is launching a Jibo lookalike at CES 2017.
Shenzhen-based Avatar Controls, a maker of smart home products, is launching its Eywa E1 Smart Home Security Robot in Sin City. Granted, Eywa is designed to be used much differently than Jibo and isn’t an exact copycat design, but c’mon.
Eywa also has a built-in WiFi speaker and something called a “multifunction player” to entertain and educate kids.
But securing your house is the main goal for Eywa. According to the company website, “when significant motion is detected, even outside the field of view, Eywa will rotate in full circle, record a short clip and send an Instant alter to your phone to play back.” Eywa comes with two door/window sensors to alert you when something’s open. When your door or window is opened, Eywa will automatically rotate and capture what happened.
We're proud to announce that Eywa E1 will be Launched in Las Vegas at #CES2017! Wish you a #happynewyear https://t.co/FzNkjYBPQj pic.twitter.com/xTQjTpQHFZ
— AVATAR CONTROLS (@avatarcontrols) December 31, 2016
Eywa also has temperature, humidity and light sensors. It offers night vision up to 32 feet, and connectivity options include WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, Zigbee and RF 915MHz. Eywa offers 8GB of storage and can playback up to 7 days of recordings. It records video in 1080p and has a 90db siren.
As for securing the security robot, Avatar Controls says Eywa devices connect to the Amazon server using AES 256-bit encryption and Transport Layer Security. And all photos and videos are secured with AES 256-bit symmetric-key encryption.
Just how much do Ewya and Oding resemble Jibo? Take a look at the pictures below and, if not for the Avatar Controls logo, you probably can’t tell the difference.
Yes, those are three different robots. We reached out to Jibo after learning about Oding, and the company simply responded that “because we’re developing a product the world hasn’t seen, we have a strong IP strategy for a new start-up, and our IP is very important to our future.” Surely Jibo would react the same way to Eywa.
While it’s good to have admirers, Jibo can’t be happy about all this.
