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With the shift in educational concepts, children’s smart robots are becoming increasingly popular in households. Through AI technology, child users enjoy a more technologically advanced educational experience. Shanghai Feihe Digital Technology Co., Ltd., in collaboration with the Ximalaya FM content platform, has developed the Xiao Bu AI education robot – Xiao Bu AI smart speaker, based on Tencent Animation’s IP “Gandu Adventure”. As a children’s smart companion robot, this product is also supported by technology providers like Turing Robot and Rokid, enriching children’s content while providing powerful voice interaction capabilities, allowing children to enjoy independent reading of picture books without parental involvement. This article will provide a comprehensive review of the Xiao Bu AI smart speaker.
Product Unboxing and Appearance
Upon opening the packaging featuring the cartoon character of Xiao Bu, the product is protected by two layers of plastic panels. The main products and accessories include: one robot product, a product manual, six card-style user guides, a product qualification certificate, a charger, and accompanying origami cards. The product manual, along with the illustrated user guide, makes it easy for users to set up the product.
Firstly, the packaging box is made of cardboard material, with no sharp corners, and features bright colors, making it both attractive and safe. The box is cleverly designed to be transformed into a helicopter shape using the origami cards. The product itself perfectly replicates the character Bubu from Tencent Animation’s “Gandu Adventure”, placing it in the overall shape of a helicopter, creating a scene-based physical animation image that helps children visualize the story context, facilitating their engagement with picture books.
Product Design
The product shell is made of food-grade silicone and environmentally friendly ABS material, which is resistant to biting and impacts while providing a comfortable feel. The power switch is located at the top of the device; a long press on the center of the disc turns it on or off. The four buttons correspond to volume up, volume down, mute, play, and pause functions, with clear and prominent icons suitable for children’s identification and operation. The product has passed strict 3C and ROHS inspection standards to ensure it is safe for children.
In addition to the decorative design of Xiao Bu’s facial features, the product has all speakers arranged around the bottom of the body, with a dense array of sound holes. To protect children’s hearing, the speaker’s high-frequency limit is set, with a default volume of 60 decibels, ensuring it is suitable for listening in a home environment.
Unlike other products on the market with single-hole microphones, Xiao Bu features four microphones on the top, ensuring comprehensive voice interaction capabilities. I tested it personally, and within a 20 square meter room, it could easily be voice-activated, meeting the usage needs of children and parents in different spaces at home. Additionally, the product’s voice convenience is demonstrated through its voice activation function, which liberates hands, allowing children to enjoy a more intelligent interactive experience compared to other products that require a single button for voice dialogue.
The bottom corners of the product are treated to protect the body from wear and tear when in contact with surfaces. The charging port and USB port are embedded, allowing for use while charging. The power indicator light is located at the bottom back of the product, changing colors to indicate battery status. When the battery is low, the product will also prompt users to charge it via voice. The product has a built-in 2000mAh battery, which allows for 3-4 hours of continuous use when fully charged. The Xiao Bu weighs about 750g, with the battery making up most of the weight, making it somewhat heavy for children to carry around.
Registration and Networking
Download the Xiao Bu app from the app store, register or log in with an existing Ximalaya account, connect your phone to WiFi, long press the power button, and follow the voice prompts. I successfully connected to the home network within five minutes, making the process very convenient.
App Design
Upon entering the app, the loading screen features an animation of Xiao Bu, and the main interface has a white background with neatly arranged modules, showcasing a very simple design.
The left sidebar features basic functions, including a night mode that allows users to set a specific time for activation. In night mode, the product will default to turning off the voice function. Parents can manually restore microphone use, but the product will default to turning off sound prompts and reducing the light and volume to the lowest level, ensuring it does not disturb children who are already asleep.
In addition to the left sidebar, the main menu consists of three submenus: content, chat, and skills. The content menu features a scrolling display of the latest content at the top, with “Recommended for You”, “My Subscriptions”, “Leaderboard”, and “Popular Categories” in the middle, and the bottom presents content based on recommended series, allowing users to select content according to different classifications and achieve personalized reading goals. The chat menu can display real-time text records of voice interactions, making it easy for parents to understand their children’s conversations with the product and facilitate further parent-child communication. Additionally, users can correct Xiao Bu’s dialogue on this interface, helping the product better understand semantic content.
The skills menu provides users with a list of commonly used voice functions, accompanied by text guides, making it easy for users to learn and operate various voice features of the product. In addition to popular audio content, children’s songs, and stories, it also includes commonly used skills such as calendar, calculator, and currency conversion. These functions can also be performed through voice interaction, so there is no need to worry about children being unable to operate the menu due to not understanding it.
Content and Functions
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Voice Interaction Function
When connected to the internet, Xiao Bu can consciously interact with users. It supports various interaction forms such as dialogue, story requests, and singing children’s songs, engaging multiple senses of the user while alleviating parents’ concerns about pronunciation accuracy when teaching. Even if children lack literacy skills and cannot operate the app, they can independently use voice interaction and voice-activated reading functions without parental assistance.
With the support of Rokid and Turing’s technology, the Xiao Bu product is based on a vast amount of children’s data, continuously improving its accuracy in understanding children’s semantics during use. Children who have just learned to speak may have unclear pronunciation, but it can recognize such childlike voices and provide appropriate feedback. Its children’s content requires first breaking through the vocabulary barriers, using algorithms to identify content rules, weights, etc. For example, if a child requests a Tang poem song, the product first converts the voice to text, then interprets the text, and finally matches it to a specific poem. The matching results may vary from today to tomorrow, possibly based on the recent week’s rankings or historical rankings to recommend specific content.
It also uses a childlike voice for dialogue; every time it is voice-activated, it has several different voice feedback options, making the product more humanized and closer to child users. I tested it personally, and not only direct voice conversations but also audio inputs from other terminals, Xiao Bu could quickly recognize and respond appropriately. For instance, when I recorded a greeting audio on my phone, Xiao Bu responded very well. Additionally, its user-friendliness is high; I can directly say the first line of a poem, and Xiao Bu will complete the next line without needing to emphasize what the next line is. Rokid and Turing provide many voice-related features, and Xiao Bu will continue to develop and gradually open up other functions in collaboration with other partners.
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Smart Reading Function
In addition to technical highlights, Xiao Bu relies on the Ximalaya FM platform, covering 18,460 children’s stories, 50,200 children’s songs, 325 types of children’s English classes, and 5,182 classical Chinese texts among various children’s content. Xiao Bu also collaborates with original children’s picture book bases and book-loving campuses to continuously update high-quality picture book content. Currently, all these contents are free, and users can also log into the Xiao Bu app using their Ximalaya FM account to access paid content within their account.
To ensure parents’ peace of mind, Xiao Bu has conducted strict secondary reviews of children’s content, ensuring that children’s reading environments are healthy and safe. If Xiao Bu detects inappropriate language or abusive words during conversations, it will correctly guide children not to use such language, helping to improve their civility. I tested it personally, and if Xiao Bu receives inappropriate content, it will directly voice feedback that it does not understand or that the content is unsuitable for children, recommending related healthy children’s content instead.
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Life Assistance Function
The product can also serve as a Bluetooth speaker, easily connecting to terminals via Bluetooth to play high-quality music. It includes translation, calculator, timer alarm, news, weather forecasts, unit conversions, encyclopedia Q&A, word chain games, and more. For example, sounds of nature and animal calls can help children recognize nature and the world through the sounds provided by Xiao Bu. Additionally, it supports Chinese-English translation and English conversations, allowing children to learn bilingual skills through voice interaction, effectively acting as a teaching companion. It also includes functions for encyclopedias, calculations, conversions, etc., to train children’s thinking from multiple angles. All these functions can be operated via voice, freeing hands while helping children learn daily life skills. The platform will gradually launch more functions suitable for children’s learning in the future.
Product Suggestions
After my evaluation, several issues were noted. Firstly, it cannot connect to public networks and does not support 5G. In a public network environment, two phones are required to operate: one as a hotspot and the other to connect to the product, limiting user convenience. Secondly, I hope its night mode can include an eye protection mode, designing screen colors suitable for nighttime reading, as white can be glaring at night. Additionally, the product’s battery life still needs improvement. When using the product with both Bluetooth and WiFi enabled, it consumes relatively more power. Improving battery life while reducing size and weight would greatly enhance the user experience.
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