A new species is evolving—the humanoid robot. The family of human-like robots adds a new sibling with Chinese Ubtech Robotics’ crowdfunding campaign for Alpha 2—its newest humanoid companion-bot. The little fellow is “designed for practical household service and companionship,” because Ubtech felt that the need for human-like, responsive technology is growing. Alpha 2 is the brainchild of James Chow, Ubtech’s CEO. Made from aluminum alloy, PC + ABS housing, this small domestic drone is designed on the same premise as today’s smartphones — a responsive, intuitive and attractive platform on which to develop intelligent and useful functionality. Indeed, the Alpha 2 is fully programmable, operates on an open-source OS, and offers some impressive sensory inputs, including ultrasonic, touch, and pressure sensors. The robot companion may be small, but he is pretty smart. His brain is connected to the cloud, which allows it to leverage more visual and audio processing power than what could be physically implanted in a plastic skull. Alpha 2 can perform a series of activities (so far). It can manage weekly calendars and provide verbal reminders for scheduled tasks; his conversation skills make of him a tutor or interpreter, and he can also follow verbal instructions. Of course, he can take high quality photos (8 million-pixel camera with auto-focus and built-in powerful visual computing systems and smart technologies) and can also post them on social media. Alpha 2 can perform home security monitoring and alerts, entertain your children, guests, and even pets. We couldn’t really grasp exactly how the robot can entertain pets, hopefully it doesn’t involve letting the cat push it off the table. The 17-inch tall alloy family companion is equipped with 2GB of RAM memory, 16GB of storage, and a Samsung Exynos 5260 six-core processor. The five-pound robot...