Moxie the Robot – Image courtesy of Embodied
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Owners of Embodied's doomed Moxie robot may get a reprieve from being shut down thanks to an 11-hour open-source attempt to keep the bot running.
In early December, it was reported that Embodied, the company behind the Moxie baby robot, was shutting down and taking the robot with it. Owners of the $800 robot were informed that it would stop working after its cloud servers were shut down in the future.
Since Moxie was used by parents to help with the social development of children, including those with autism, this meant that parents had to explain why their children could no longer play with their robot friend.
Now, it looks like Moxie may be allowed to continue working if an attempt to make some changes to the software is successful.
In a LinkedIn post on Friday, spotted by Ars Technica, Moxie owners were informed of attempts to work around the cloud server issue. It is planned to release a local server application “OpenMoxie” that will run on a computer in a home network.
The idea is that after an over-the-air update for Moxie itself, owners can launch a server application that Moxie will connect to for processing.
OpenMoxie will be a “community-driven option” that will handle the core functionality for Moxie when released. It will be possible to develop new features for Moxie and make changes to how the robot works without using Embodied’s cloud servers at all.
There are two snags, however. First, there is an urgent over-the-air update for the robot that owners must install as soon as possible, as it will only be available while Embodied’s cloud servers are available.
To perform the over-the-air update, Moxie must be turned on and connected to Wi-Fi. It will take at least an hour for the update to automatically download and install in the background.
The second hurdle is the actual release of the OpenMoxie server application itself. The company's notice says it is being worked on, but does not say when or if it will be released.
Embodied intends to “release all necessary code and documentation so that developers or community members can maintain and improve Moxie independently.”
The notice reiterates in detail that there will be no “warranties, promises, or guarantees” for Moxie once the OTA update is released. All code and documentation are provided to the community “as is,” and that Embodied employees are not expected to provide technical assistance or further updates.
Once the update and release of the server software, it is unlikely that Moxie will return to full functionality for quite some time, even with significant community effort. But it does at least give families hope that the robot can continue to be a friend for the foreseeable future.
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