A project on crowdfunding site Indiegogo is bringing life to Windows Phone 8.1's new speech assistant by allowing Cortana to control an off-the-shelf robot. By connecting a Windows Phone handset, in this case a Nokia Lumia, to a WowWee robot called RoboMe, the developer is able to control the robot with an app. With Cortana behind the robot, RoboMe gains a new set of personality and hence the name Nanabot. Best VPN providers 2020: Learn about ExpressVPN, NordVPN & more

Pledging for the project starts at $10 for the basic version of the software. If the funding goal is met, the developer says that an open source toolkit will be released so that other developers can build on top of the work. The developer hopes that Windows Phone could be leveraged for building robotic apps.