Bots and personal assistants excite at Mobile World Congress

Gadgets rained from the skies at this year’s Mobile World Congress and there were plenty of weird and wacky devices on display.

Robot technology

Gadgets rained from the skies at this year’s Mobile World Congress at Barcelona as the annual tech congress — traditionally the ­domain of telecommunications companies and mobile phones — gave way to the weird and the wonderful.

Smartphones still command plenty of respect, but here are a few devices that also managed to turn plenty of heads.

LG Rolling Bot

The Rolling Bot is a remotely controlled ball that records video and audio as you move. It’s ­designed for LG’s flagship phone, the G5, and you control it with a smartphone. Being a ball, it should keep rolling along like Old Man River, unless it gets stuck in a ledge or rolls into the sink. LG promotes its little bot as a mobile home monitor. As long as you keep it away from obstacles, you should successfully navigate around.

But it’s not jet propelled, so don’t ­expect it to bounce up the staircase. Would it ward off a burglar? If they saw it darting along they could throw it into the rubbish or switch it off and pocket it for their own use.

But they may be perturbed that they were caught on remote camera and leave.

As for LG’s claim that it’s a pet monitor: sure, you can talk to your pet through its in-built speaker, but hopefully your cat won’t claw it or your dog bury it in the back yard. It connects to home WiFi and Bluetooth and one of LG’s claims is that you can use it to remotely control connected devices.

It shoots eight megapixel stills and 1080p video. A 16 gigabyte ­microSD card is ­included for storage. We may have to wait six months or more for Rolling Bot as it is still under development. Pricing and availability is unknown.

Starship Technologies’ delivery robot

Forget menacing cyclists riding on the footpath. Soon delivery ­machines will zip past you on the pavement.

Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis are ­behind an internet-controlled local delivery robot that can ferry the equivalent of two grocery bags.

Just as you track your phone or Uber taxi from afar, you can track groceries, pizza or red wines from a local store to home from an app.

But what about security? Starship says your goods are safe because no one other than the recipient can unlock the cargo. But could you prevent someone on the street stealing the robot with the goods inside? Robot-napping might have to become a crime.

Heinla and Friis say the robot can be overseen by human operators who would ensure its safety. But if ­humans are needed, why not just use a delivery boy or girl and keep things simple?

They say the robot would travel at walking pace, just 6km/h. Navigation and obstacle avoidance software would see it blend in with pedestrian traffic. In the end, there’s lots of challenges for a ­delivery robot to meet. We’ll see how good the idea is when a rollout takes place this year.

Sony Xperia Ear

Done well, a mobile digital personal assistant can be a new-age experience. Apple offers Siri, there’s Google Now and Microsoft Cortana and you engage them as you need them: for dictating text, looking up maps and information, and for commanding your phone to play music tracks. Otherwise you forget they are there.

Sony Xperia Ear has the potential to take that further, to a place where a personal assistant becomes an ­ongoing conversation, a continual interface between you and the world. In Xperia Ear’s case, that means a perpetual voice in your ear, reading your emails, the weather, missed calls and telling you about Facebook updates.

It ­interprets your world. Its success will depend on how well Sony ­implements this.

Sony tried a very early version of the concept with its Smart B-Trainer and, sadly, it wasn’t so hot. It will be several months before Xperia Ear comes to market, so hopefully the user experience will be good by then.

Sony Xperia Ear is designed to work with newer Android smartphones, comes in several colours and with a case that’s an integrated battery charger. Sadly, being a tiny Bluetooth-connected device, there are limits on battery life, less than four hours from reports.