"The Weekender: Robots, Robots Everywhere (Even at the Litter Box)"

From PYMNTS.com, November 22:

Blame the elves. They saw generative artificial intelligence (AI) coming for their jobs and outsourced Christmas to robots. This holiday season, the digital economy’s strangest edges have gone gloriously mainstream: your drink is mixed by a bot, your window is squeegeed by a suction-climbing square, and your cat’s litter is analyzed like a lab sample. If it moves, beeps, cleans, scoots, mows, mixes or meows: there’s a robot for that.

Why this is suddenly everywhere

Robotics quietly jumped the fence from cute gizmos and warehouse pickers into home life because AI now gives machines better eyes, ears and timing. Vision models let mowers find grass without wires; sensor fusion keeps window bots from leaping off the glass; LLM-powered “companions” follow faces and voices; and even grills “learn” how you like your ribeye. The result? A Black Friday/Cyber Monday gift list that reads like a Fast Company fever dream and a snapshot of how automation is commercializing at the edges. Case in point: Whisker just launched a new LitterRobot with AI cat facial recognition and waste monitoring. Yes, for your cat. Welcome to 2025.

The Fringe Robotics Gift Guide: 10 Bots Invading Home, Yard and Pet Life

1. The AI Litter Box That Knows Whiskers From Whiskers
   Whisker’s LitterRobot 5 Pro adds cameras and on-device AI to tell which cat is doing what, feeding health insights into the app. If that’s a step too far, the still-current LitterRobot 4 remains the benchmark for quiet, self-cleaning convenience. Poop data is officially a product category now.

1. Robot Dog, No Walk Required
   The Unitree Go2 is the consumer-grade quadruped that turned robot dogs from YouTube novelty into programmable pets and dev kits. It ships with Unitree’s 4D LiDAR for 360° perception and learned “gaits” like obstacle climbing — equal parts STEM toy and living room conversation starter.

1. Your New (Algorithmic) Bartender
   Barsys 360 is an app-controlled cocktail robot that meters pours and walks you through recipes from a phone. You supply spirits and mixers; Barsys does the precision. Ideal for hosts who want probar consistency without memorizing 1,000 ratios.

1. A Window-Clinging Cleaner
   The ECOVACS Winbot W1 Pro treats panes like floors, auto-spraying and plotting back-and-forth paths that avoid edges — even on frameless glass. If you’ve ever squeegeed a second-story window in a stiff breeze, you already know why this is a “shut up and take my money” category.

1. Pool Robot = Saturdays Back
   Maytronics’ Dolphin Nautilus CC Plus (WiFi) scrubs floors and walls and lets you schedule cycles in the MyDolphin app. If “drag the hose around” was the old pool routine, this is the set-and-forget upgrade....

....MUCH MORE 

Also at PYMNTS, November 29:

Yes, You Can Finance a Near-Orbit Ticket From Your Smartphone 

If your Cyber Monday cart still tops out at an air fryer and some half-off sweats, you’re thinking too small.

In 2025, the same thumb you use to doomscroll can quietly commit you to a gold-plated toilet, a 550,000-euro watch or a $125,000 ticket to the edge of space. No personal shopper, no hushed boutique, just a browser tab and a strong credit limit....

....MUCH MORE