The creator of Roomba is back with a furry robot companion

Colin Angle, the maker of the Roomba and the person who helped put 50 million family robots into individuals’s properties, is back with a new robot. But this one is designed as a companion, not a cleaner.

The first robot from Angle’s new firm, Familiar Machines & Magic, is a dog-sized robotic pet that resembles a cross between a bear, a barn owl, and a golden retriever. It has an expressive face, with movable eyebrows, ears, and eyes, and the corporate calls it a “Familiar,” a identify meant to evoke folklore across the thought of a supernatural companion. Based on a demo video I noticed forward of its look on the WSJ Future of Everything convention this week, the quadruped robot can transfer round your house on all fours independently, like a pet.

The Familiar is a “physically embodied AI system” that may use generative AI, by way of an on-device mannequin, to interact with its proprietor with the intent of forming an emotional connection and develop “a distinct personality,” Angle instructed me in an interview. Robots that may react and reply to people ought to, in idea, be more practical serving in what Angle calls “high human connection roles,” similar to companionship, leisure, hospitality, sensible house, eldercare, and parental assist. “The next era of robotics is not just about dexterity or humanoid form — it’s about machines that can build and sustain human connection,” says Angle.

Internally codenamed Ami, the primary Familiar received’t be that can be purchased till subsequent 12 months on the earliest, and can price “around the same as pet ownership,” Angle stated. Its actual options are additionally nonetheless below wraps, however Angle says preliminary use circumstances are targeted on households with younger kids, companionship for the aged, and addressing the worldwide loneliness epidemic. It’s a daring transfer for a man who constructed a profession on robots that clear flooring.

Angle says his total three-decade profession in robotics has led to this second. The authentic identify for iRobot, based in 1990, was Artificial Creatures Inc. But back then, the tech to create synthetic life didn’t exist. “Finally, I get to do what I originally set out to do. It’s not just about building cool animatronics. Now is finally the time where the tech exists — if properly and responsibly used — to start creating Familiars.”

After iRobot’s failed sale to Amazon, Angle stepped down as CEO in 2024. In the time since, he and Familiar Machines cofounders Angle, alongside with cofounders (and that iRobot veterans) Ira Renfrew and Chris Jones, have assembled a workforce of roboticists and engineers from Disney, MIT, Boston Dynamics, Amazon, Bose, and Sonos. Their purpose is to create a robot that is not simply a toy or a chatbot slapped into a piece of plastic, as we noticed in every single place at CES this 12 months.

From the get-go, the workforce dismissed the thought of a humanoid robot, believing it unnecessarily sophisticated for his or her function. The robot is a intentionally unidentifiable creature as a result of, Angle says, for those who create a particular animal or form-factor, individuals could have preconceived concepts about its talents.

They additionally determined to not have the Familiar speak. Instead, it can make nonverbal sounds — the 2 items proven off at WSJ Future of Everything made meowing and purring noises. “By design, it will avoid giving factual advice about things that maybe it shouldn’t be giving factual advice about,” says Angle, with a nod towards the new water LLM-powered chatbots preserve getting themselves in.

Primary communication might be via expression and physique language, aided by a camera-based imaginative and prescient system and microphone array. With 23 levels of freedom, the robot can transfer its head, neck, ears, eyes, and eyebrows, and stroll at a gradual human tempo, however it might probably’t grip issues or climb stairs. Its 4 legs present stability, which ought to assist with issues across the robot falling and damaging property or injuring individuals.

Familiar Machines’ purpose is to make use of AI to create a robot that may be taught from its homeowners, bear in mind patterns, and adapt to their routines, with the goal of fostering long-term engagement, says Angle. They need to keep away from being caught in a closet or falling sufferer to the destiny of dozens of earlier house robots (see Jibo, Aibo, Vector, Astro, and so on.). “If this is a toy, we’ve failed,” says Angle. “If this is a creature that you want in your world, then we’ve knocked it out of the park. It’s kind of one way or the other.”

The Familiar is powered by Nvidia’s Jetson Orin chip. “Its onboard edge AI stack is powered by a custom small multimodal model optimized for social reasoning, combining vision, audio, language, and memory to create socially responsive behaviors in real time,” says Angle. It doesn’t require an web connection, though it may be related, and it doesn’t stream audio or video to the cloud, a purposeful design resolution to guard privateness and enhance latency. However, it’s nonetheless a machine with cameras and mics in your loved ones house.

Physical AI for human connections?

So, why would anybody need this robot of their house? While Angle is coy about specifics, for the reason that robot is nonetheless in improvement, he says an AI-powered companion may assist handle the rising drawback of loneliness and supply a substitute for know-how that retains us glued to screens.

“If your Familiar gets you up and out of your room and walking around — that’s a real way to try to address isolation and loneliness,” he says. Most makes an attempt at companion robots to this point fail the “plate of glass” take a look at, says Angle. “If a sheet of glass between you and the device wouldn’t change the experience, it should just be a screen.” This is why the robot is designed to work together with you, together with nudging you and hugging you. It additionally has a “luxurious” touch-sensitive coat, says Angle.

The video demo I noticed of the Familiar confirmed a boy placing down his pill to pet it, a man deciding to cease doomscrolling and go to mattress after a nudge from the robot, an aged girl strolling Ami, and a youthful girl doing yoga subsequent to it. The thought is that if it encourages you to do issues apart from being on a display screen or sitting alone at house, you’re extra more likely to interact with different individuals.

While extra non-screen-based interactive know-how could possibly be an antidote to our screen-obsessed society, it’s a particularly tenuous hyperlink to extra human interplay. It’s going to take a lot greater than a robotic pet to unglue my teenager from TikTok. And it is nonetheless a robot, not a human you’re interacting with. By providing a substitute for some points of human companionship, it may simply as simply change into as massive a barrier to actual social interplay as screens are.

Assuming Angle and his workforce can pull off the robotic and persona components, success will nonetheless rely closely on how customers reply to bringing a robot into their properties. And how a lot it prices. The first Roomba was a hit as a result of it price below $200 and vacuumed the ground. “Pet ownership costs” is a dizzyingly broad vary. While Angle claims curiosity within the Familiar is “higher than what we saw with Roomba,” the shortage of a clear function looks like a drawback.

The strongest use circumstances Angle hinted at are as a father or mother assist device — a machine that interacts with your kids when you may’t and is higher than a pill or TV display screen — and as elder assist, serving to alleviate loneliness and managing routines for medicine and motion. The latter is just like one of the few profitable companion robots to this point, Intuition Robotics’ ElliQ. (Angle is on the corporate’s board).

Many individuals will take a look at this Familiar idea and say, “I’d rather have a real dog or a cat.” As a devoted pet proprietor, I do know I would favor to present my cat snuggles, stroll my canine, or hang around with my chickens than spend time with a machine. Angle factors out that there are various causes individuals can’t have pets, sharing a statistic that claims pet possession declines to only 9 p.c after age 68, when it might probably change into tougher for somebody to take care of an animal. For those that need an animal companion however for no matter cause can’t have one, the Familiar could possibly be an fascinating different.

Angle demoed two Familiars on stage on the WSJ convention, exhibiting them transferring round, strolling, and interacting with individuals, and making meowing and purring noises. The items have been partially operator-controlled. Angle didn’t say to what extent, however he says the Familiar might be absolutely autonomous by the point it launches subsequent 12 months. “This is a demo, but it’s a demo on its way to a product; we’re already in factories,” he instructed the viewers.

Even then, it’s not clear how shut it is going to be to Angle’s imaginative and prescient. These are very massive guarantees in a area stuffed with failures and sky-high expectations, and all we’ve seen to this point are tightly managed demos. What is clear is that Angle believes his workforce has already made important strides towards their imaginative and prescient of creating synthetic life. “It’s not a toy. It’s a real robot,” he says. “There is enough to it that it’s beautiful, wonderful to pet and give a hug to, and it can keep up with you. It’s the agency. For some definition of alive, it’s alive.”

Photo and movies by Familiar Machines & Magic