LAYER and deutsche telekom come up with holographic and emotive robot home assistants

LAYER and Deutsche Telekom team up for Concept T

LAYER and Deutsche Telekom Design and Customer Experience have engineered Concept T, a series of home assistants unveiled at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024 in Barcelona, which includes a holographic hub, an emotive and roving personal robot, and a modular router. It took 18 months of collaboration before LAYER and Deutsche Telekom Design and Customer Experience gave birth to Concept T. The result comes in three forms: View, Buddy, and Level, each with its own technological functions, from projecting calls and chats on a crystal ball to monitoring furniture and tech at home without the need for hands to switch them on or off.

a holographic workspace with Concept View | images courtesy of LAYER and Deutsche Telekom

Holographic workspace with CONCEPT VIEW

LAYER and Deutsche Telekom Design and Customer Experience take projected reality to new heights by flashing the services and hardware of the telecom company inside a transparent glass ball. The holographic hub has a human face named Emma, who serves as the operating system’s personnel. The 3D holographic, AI-powered virtual assistant guides the users through the apps they need and even facilitates holographic calls.

the 3D holographic, AI-powered virtual assistant named Emma guides the users through the apps

In this way, users can take video calls through the transparent glass ball, reminiscent of mediums used to communicate with spirits or the other world. Smart cameras scan the user’s face to create their holographic avatar, and so far, only the services offered by Deutsche Telekom Design and Customer Experience are projected onto the transparent glass ball. Visitors to the Deutsche Telekom stand at MWC 2024, which was also designed by LAYER, had the chance to see the working prototype and create their own 3D holographic avatar.

Concept Buddy is an emotive and roving robot router that moves around the house and controls smart appliances

CONCEPT BUDDY, an emotive and roving robot router

From the transparent glass ball, LAYER and Deutsche Telekom Design and Customer Experience move on to create an emotive and roving robot router that moves around the house and can control smart appliances and fixtures. The AI-based companion communicates what happens around the house using its expression, emotion, and information display without its modular head unit. If users find its head monitor too small to check the information, Concept Buddy can also flash the information on any surface, from ceilings and floors to walls.

Concept Buddy has installed sensing technology

The emotive and roving robot router not only provides WiFi but also nudges its owners to water their plants or take their medications. It assists them too in picking up missed calls, browsing through online shopping, and monitoring their workout and nutrition plans. LAYER and Deutsche Telekom Design and Customer Experience install sensing technology on Concept Buddy so it can decipher and capture its surroundings and human activities, and reply instantly. For example, it scans the room so that it can lower or increase the temperature of the air conditioning or heater on its own and even warn the users of potential hazards or contact emergency services in case of accidents.

Concept Level is a conceptual and re-configurable router made up of modular objects

Concept Level is a conceptual and re-configurable router

Concept Buddy isn’t the only router in the family of Concept T. LAYER and Deutsche Telekom Design and Customer Experience also devised Concept Level, a conceptual and re-configurable router made up of modular objects similar to toy blocks that children may be fond of. No wheels or emotive display in this set; just interchangeable components that make up a display unit, a WiFi-sensing element, a mesh repeater, and a computational module for Web3 uses.

these playful and geometric objects double as interior design pieces

Concept Level may please DIY fans since users can build their own router that suits how and where they want their wireless connection to function. Since these playful and geometric objects double as interior design pieces, users can either place them together on a board or surface or spread them out by decorating the spaces they want to put these objects in. As of publishing the story, LAYER and Deutsche Telekom Design and Customer Experience are developing these products for production, with no timeline yet for their release.