SwitchBot's Kata Friends greets you when you come home, and takes photos at random

When you approach your home, Kata Friends goes by itself to a spot chosen in advance to greet you and interact with you. According to SwitchBot, the device does not detect your exact position. It only checks that you have entered a zone you have defined, for example within 2 km of an address.

The device takes photos when you ask it to, by voice or with a gesture, but also at random, using a built-in mechanism. The pictures stay on an internal memory card.

It recognises faces and adapts its behaviour to each person, the manufacturer says. It also keeps a log of what it does and of its interactions, which you can read as text in the app.

SwitchBot states that this log is sent to its servers. According to the company, speech is transcribed by an artificial intelligence model that runs on the device itself.

The device is for indoor home use only. SwitchBot asks owners to tell their guests that their personal data may be collected, and to obtain their consent.