I wish that someone was doing a good autonomous robot dog kit in the style of K-9 or Goddard with decent obstacle avoidance and some human-interaction behaviors.
Give it a depth sensor (which doubles as looking like eyes!) and program it to respond to motion, or even BT signals to recognize it's human and it's friends.
And I don't want anything sphero sizes, you know? Give me something with some heft.
It doesn't have to be a terribly practical machine. It doesn't have to be the height of technology. I don't need it to actually walk.
Just give me something that I can interact with. That shows signs of autonomy. That can, with some coaxing, be taught some tricks (in response to voice commands?)
Give me a robot that makes me feel like robots are coming.
Like, when I was a kid, I had dozens of robot toys. Some of them were almost what I want now, but much dumber.
I had robot bugs with basic obstacle avoidance. Robot dogs that were supposed to charge themselves (they didn't.) an assortment of furbies and little yappy dogs, and all of them were 10 - 15 years too dumb to actually provide anything like a reasonable facsimile of companionship.
They were neat toys. They were not friends. I want a robot friend.
Where do I get it?
And it's not like this is a new desire!
I have robot toys from the 50s. They wind up, and shuffle around the table.
They are cute! They are fun! They are not friends!
Dudes in the 40s built Life Size! Humanoid Android Toys and paraded them around.
But now we have the tech to make them, you know... not useful exactly? But companionable, at least.
And I haven't seen one that is actually autonomous.
(Well, not for less than $1000.)