The Amazing Sliding Robotic Sloth Secretary

Most of the development and marketing for consumer AI assistants has focused on owner interaction, like when the owner of an Amazon Echo asks a question, orders a product, or changes the thermostat settings. But wouldn't it be nice if assistants could do more for us by interacting with the people we don't want to? The most obvious example would be an AI that could answer phone calls. But Alan Reiner skipped that step and jumped straight to building an AI assistant that could greet visitors at his home—and he designed that to look like a cyborg sloth.

This is essentially a big sloth head that slides back and forth along a rail. The idea is for that rail to mount on Reiner's house's siding by the front door. When someone walks up to the door, the sloth will slide over to greet and/or terrify them. If they aren't immediately scared off, that person can speak with the sloth and tell it their business. The sloth is wise and will attempt to determine if that business is worth Reiner's attention. If it is, the person can go to the door and speak to Reiner himself. If it isn't, the sloth will take a message to pass along to Reiner.

Mechanically, this works a lot like camera slider rigs. The platform underneath the sloth head has bearings to ride along a length of aluminum extrusion. Motors let it move left or right and ultrasonic sensors tell it when it reaches either end. Aside from the aluminum extrusion, almost all of the parts were 3D-printed.

Unfortunately, that is about all we know at this point. Reiner has only published one video so far and it covers the mechanical portion of the build. He'll be publishing one or more additional videos in the future explaining all of the electronics and the AI system. Like us, you're probably really curious to see how this AI is able to handle visitors. So be sure to subscribe to Reiner's channel so you can see those details when they become available.