Mattel is a company that has built its reputation on the wonder of childhood. Recognized as one of the leaders in play, learning and development worldwide, Mattel’s portfolio of global consumer brands includes American Girl®, Barbie®, Fisher-Price®, Hot Wheels®, Monster High® and Thomas & Friends®, among many others.
The Mattel’s nabi® brand is known for creating innovative high tech solutions for kids and families. Their latest innovation is Aristotle, a first-of-its kind. Developed by the help of technology heavyweights Microsoft, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., and Silk Labs, Mattel have designed a product with the specific purpose of aiding parents. Aristotle’s main mission is to evolve with your child’s needs as they change from infancy to adolescence. Aristotle will comfort, entertain, teach, and assist you each of your child’s development stage.
“Aristotle’s main mission is to evolve with your child’s needs as they change from infancy to adolescence.”
When it comes to building Aristotle, Mattel focused on solving parents’ biggest concerns when it comes to IoT. They recognized these areas to be security, privacy, and intuitive ease of use. To that end, Aristotle features 256-bit encryption through the cloud and is fully COPPA compliant. Meanwhile, the platform’s Artificial Intelligence will utilize three distinct AI engines, including Microsoft Cognitive Services and the Silk Intelligence Platform. These multi-levels of AI enable Aristotle to learn patterns and autonomously act upon user habits to aid in child development and learning.
Aristotle’s unique AI personality has been created to not only appeal to both parents and kids, but it has also been designed to solve one of the biggest issues facing IoT today. This issue is that IoT platforms activate a series of disaggregated devices that must be purchased separately, set up individually and may or may not be compatible with one another. Aristotle incorporates AI, voice, sight and sounds into its hub and camera, providing an all-in-one solution that simply works together. Therefore, the core system is much more than a stylish Bluetooth®/Wi-Fi® Direct speaker with a powerful, voice activated AI.
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With its dynamic built-in LED multiple color, lighting system and companion Wi-Fi camera, Aristotle delivers enhanced AI capabilities that enable it to do more specialized functions autonomously, including helping soothe a crying baby, purchase diapers or find online deals, reinforce good manners in kids, and even help kids learn a foreign language. On these great features, Jim Mitchell, VP and GM of nabi, a division of Mattel, said, “Raising kids can be hectic, and we saw a need for an IoT system that simplifies the complex and dynamic lives of families, while providing them with peace of mind. Our goal with the launch of Aristotle is to provide parents with a platform that simplifies parenting, while helping them nurture, teach, and protect their young ones.”
Adoption of Aristotle should be easy. Especially with how Mattel is using technology to celebrate childhood milestones. We know that we are intrigued. Of all the top-of-the line technology features available on this revolutionary digital nanny, we love how the voice-activated AI product tailored to families has been created to help nurture and teach children and their parents too.
“Mattel is using technology to celebrate childhood milestones.”
Other features worthy of mention includes Aristotle’s use of Microsoft Cognitive Services – and soon Cortana Intelligence. With its search capabilities powered by Bing, Aristotle’s proprietary intelligence platform, created in conjunction with Silk Labs, enables nabi to create its own hardware and software experiences. Featuring both a parent and child mode, Aristotle is powered by Qualcomm Technologies’ Smart Home Reference Platform, which is based on the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 212 processor.
When it comes to the role that Aristotle can play in your life, the possibilities are truly endless. Another favourite feature has to be the companion Wi-Fi camera. Featuring object recognition and movement detection, the WiFi camera has been designed to further enhance Aristotle’s AI capabilities enabling more specialized functions. These specialized functions include Aristotle automatically playing a lullaby and turn lights on dim when it hears a sleeping baby begin to cry. Or for a toddler, the dynamic lighting system will light up green or red to acknowledge if the child has answered a question correctly during a voice activated learning lesson.
“Aristotle has the ability to evolve from a platform centered on nurturing infant development to being a platform focused on teaching and entertainment.”
Mattel Aristotle Baby, Toddler, Kid and Tween
Designed to grow up with a child, Aristotle has the ability to evolve from a platform centered on the nurturing of infant development which in turn simplifies moms’/dads’ lives, to a platform focused on teaching and entertainment using audio, visual and tactile learning methods. New parents will adore Aristotle baby. It allows parents to keep track and monitor sleeping, changing and feeding developments, serving as all-in-one. With eCommerce functionalities tied directly to key retail partners means that Aristotle will automatically be able to reorder or look for deals and coupons on baby consumables, formula and other baby products when it detects you are likely running low on the specific item.
Besides Aristotle baby, there is Aristotle toddler which uses audio, visual and tactile learning methods for ABCs, 123s first words, sing-alongs and story time. Then there is Aristotle kid, which helps with homework, entertains and acts as a playmate. Aristotle tween brags more sophisticated learning capabilities that include foreign language lessons, social networking integration, in addition to core entertainment functions.
Designed to be compatible with several current IoT systems, Aristotle seamlessly connects with Wink, Wemo, Samsung Smart Things, Philips Hue, Zigbee among others. Priced at $299.00, Aristotle will be available this summer 2017.