CES 2017: Sony Xperia Agent charms its robotic ways into our heart

By Nicole Batac

Las Vegas - The smart speaker/home assistant is being considered a growth market by a lot of brands. It’s not surprising that more and more of these smart home speakers are cropping up. While Sony doesn’t have a consumer-ready version for this segment, there is a prototype that’s been making the rounds at the big conferences since last year. You may or may not have heard of Sony Xperia Agent, a tiny adorable home assistant robot with artificial intelligence. You speak to it and it can do everything from fix your calendar, play songs on connected devices, throw photos or video files from phones into big screen TVs, etc.

We caught a demo of what the robot can do at CES and see how naturally it interacts with the person it’s talking. The ‘bot learns how you speak to it so it can react accordingly. And react it does, as the camera part moves around like a human head would. It tries to see who’s interacting with it. There are lights to it that make it look like the eyes of the device. It makes it seem like you’re actually talking to someone when speaking to the Xperia Agent. It even dances along when asked to play a song.

Sony reps couldn’t talk much about the specs of the Xperia Agent but that’s expected from a prototype. We’d want to see an actual product soon, though. This is something we wouldn’t mind having around the house.