This robotic companion is your pet’s photographer

For a long time, technology companies have promoted pet cameras as a way to see what your fur ball is doing when you’re not home. Vex, a new robot companion launched at CES this week, takes it one step further: It tracks your pet, films as it moves, and uses artificial intelligence to stitch together a video of the footage.

Vex is a little white ball that comes with cute, short limbs, ears, and accessories in a range of colors. It’s small enough to hold in one hand, so it will definitely be smaller than any pet you want to photograph.

It’s autonomous enough to follow your cat or dog around the house and play with them, and uses visual recognition to identify specific pets. He films as he walks, taking low-angle shots that have to get a little closer to your pet’s perspective, and cutting down everyday footage into “touching narratives and shareable stories.” Manufacturer FrontierX hasn’t actually shared an example of that modified footage, which will be the real test of whether this is worth it.

He is joined by Aura, a larger spherical robot with a circular facial display. This is being sold as a people companion robot, with the ability to read body language and facial expressions to understand your mood. Like Vex, it can follow you, and even talk to you with the help of LLM-powered chat features.

Both Vex and Aura are still in development — and FrontierX is so early that it doesn’t have a live website yet, just a website Naked Instagram page. However, the company says it will be ready to take pre-orders in the next six months, though it did not mention how much either robot will cost.