Anki’s Cozmo gets a holiday update with new storyboarding features

Who said old robots can’t learn new tricks? Just two years and change following its debut, Anki’s Cozmo — a cute companion with an AI-powered personality — is getting a milestone update to ring in the New Year.

The first spotlight feature in 3.1 Holiday Release (as Anki’s calling it) is Cozmo Performs. It replaces Cozmo Says, which let Cozmo owners type in words or short sentences for Cozmo to recite, with a gallery or preprogrammed moves and tricks for Cozmo to act out. States like “Happy,” “Dizzy,” “Frustrated,” and “Furious” can be storyboarded and accompanied with text, the latter of which Cozmo’s text-to-speech engine synthesizes aloud.