Yes, you can mount your phone on the car’s dashboard to use its virtual assistant function all throughout a drive. Problem is, that’s just one more way to further deplete your already overused phone’s battery charge. Why not install a dedicated virtual assistant in your car instead? That’s exactly what you get with the Dashbot.
Designed to mount on the dashboard, it’s a dedicated in-car AI that puts a handy virtual assistant on tap once it pairs with the accompanying phone app (Android 5+ and iOS 10+) anytime you’re behind the wheel. No need to pull out that phone to get turn by turn directions, answer a call, or flip through your favorite playlists – this thing lets you do everything through a device that sits on the dash full time.
The Dashbot is a bar-shaped device with an array of LEDs out front that serve as its visual indicators for various functions (it acts as a visualizer when playing music and shows direction arrows in turn-by-turn mode), eliminating the distracting screen that, let’s be honest, you don’t really need while driving. It comes with a hi-fi MEMS microphone array to ensure it picks up voice commands and queries loud and clear, all while hooking up with the car’s speakers to provide its responses.
It runs, by the way, on the CHIP Pro board computer, so this is very hackable if you’re into tinkering with stuff. And just in case you prefer Amazon’s Alexa as your on-the-road companion, it has full support for that virtual assistant, too.
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for Dashbot. Pledges to reserve a unit starts at $49.