Meet the Robotics Company Apple Just Anointed

It was cool, but it was also a bit confounding. What was Apple trying to tell us about its future plans by showing us this particular company? Right after the keynote, one of the company's PR people emailed me to ask if I wanted to meet with Anki's CEO Boris Sofman, a Carnegie Mellon robotics guy (as are his two cofounders Hanns Tappeiner and Mark Palatucci). I accepted, mostly so I could find out what got Apple so excited about this little toy startup. Of course, they'd hate to be called a toy startup.