[Art]

No, not about singing in a group, but rather what groups are doing.

It seems that with this "enlightened" or renewed age of robotics, practically every company is trying to push all kinds of new and greatest best thing on the market. Some of these robots are quite useless and the user would be far better off doing the task alone rather than entrust it to a fumbling robot.

Face it, it is all about the money and some people and companies will put out all manner of toy, gizmo or widget if they think it can make them some money, no matter how impractical or costly.

Worse yet are those hordes of Crowd-Funding ventures. Please understand that while there are some really good and legitimate products and ideas, there are an equal number of cons and shysters plying their trade and preying on people's sympathy and also some people's innate need to feel good by doing good. Well, say goodbye to your money if investing in some of these.

Use some common sense, judgement and ask questions of the product and the people representing it before you hand over some hard earned money. Just a thought....

Buyer / investor beware.

[Freddy]

Yes, the majority of these devices wouldn't be there if it wasn't for crowd funding - which is a good and bad thing. I'm guessing developers have gone the traditional route of funding without success. Does this escape things like being ready for market and a peer review of whether it is actually going to sell ? Again, could be good or bad.

Seems to me a lot of crowd funded projects fail. I've supported two, one was for a years development costs and five years or more later it has still not hit the shelf. The other, a VR product, was successful and I was pleased with it.

I agree that for me these assistants and the like really don't fill any gap that I can't do myself at the moment.