LAS VEGAS — Misty Robotics Inc. today announced the launch of the “Misty as a Concierge” template for its Misty II platform robot at CES 2020 here. The Misty II application templates are open source code intended to provide developers with a robust starting point to build tasks or skills and quickly put the robot to work, said the company.

Boulder, Colo.-based Misty Robotics is a spin-out of connected toy maker Sphero Inc. The company has received funding from Venrock, Foundry Group, and others, including $11 million in December 2018 as a follow-on to its Series A round. Misty Robotics began shipping Misty II to crowdfunding backers this past autumn.

Misty as a Concierge to help commercial app designers

Misty uses Microsoft’s .NET Core and released a .NET software development kit for Misty last month. Robotics software developers can use the Misty as a Concierge template to program the robotic platform for environments such as entertainment and sports venues, hotels, eldercare, retail, commercial real estate, museums, and more, said the company.

“Since the launch of Misty II, we have received interest for a variety of use cases and wanted to provide developers a fast and easy way to get started using Misty in a business environment,” said Ian Bernstein, founder and head of product at Misty Robotics. “One of the most popular requests has been to use Misty as a concierge or office greeter, so we created the Misty as a Concierge application template to give developers a starting point to accelerate deployment.”

“With more utility application templates planned in 2020, we will continue to support our mission to help the community make robots a useful part of our daily lives in business and personal settings,” he added.

Misty as a Concierge application takes advantage of Misty II’s ability to detect people nearby, greet them, and interact with them to provide information and responses to their questions. It integrates with third-party application programming interfaces such as Wolfram Alpha and FourSquare, said Misty Robotics.

In addition, developers can extend the utility of the concierge skill with other functions such as reservations, point-of-sale systems, calls for assistance, and providing directions, according to the company.

Misty’s application templates consist of the code that facilitates skills, an implementation guide, and a recorded workshop on how to use it. While Misty Robotics has created the initial templates, the company said it expects the community to support and maintain more templates. It invited developers to contribute their own code as they add capabilities to Misty II.

More uses for Misty II

Misty as a Concierge offers developers multiple practical uses, said Misty Robotics, including the following:

• Hospitality — Hotels (in room and lobby), luxury suites in entertainment venues
• Eldercare — Facilities (in room, lobby, central gathering rooms), individual homes
• Retail — Front desk, non-staffed locations such as a printing desk, and floor displays like a car showroom or in-store display
• Commercial real estate — Front lobby, meeting rooms, visitor centers
• Healthcare — Hospitals (in room and lobby), doctors’ offices
• Education — School lobby, front offices
• Museums — Front lobby, specialized installations
• Marketing — Events and activations

The Misty as a Concierge application template can be downloaded from https://github.com/MistySampleSkills/Misty-Concierge-Template. The Misty II robot is available for purchase at www.mistyrobotics.com.

Editor’s note: See also our “Robots for Good” track and “5G and Robotics” panel at CES 2020.