One of iRobot's co-founders is now making weird little robot companions
Colin Angle, the guy who co-founded iRobot and helped put robot vacuums in millions of homes, just unveiled his new company and forthcoming product. The new venture is called Familiar Machines & Magic and it's making robots for companionship, and not for sweeping floors.
They are called Familiars and are being described as "physically embodied AI systems to perceive, adapt and interact with people in ways that feel natural and consistent." That sounds like a pet, but with loyalty and love replaced by algorithms.
"The next era of robotics is not just about dexterity or humanoid form — it's about machines that can build and sustain human connection," he said at The Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything conference. "My goal has always been to create systems that understand context, remember interactions and behave with consistency over time."
The company says that its first Familiar has been "purpose-built for social interaction" with a general design architecture "optimized for expressive, whole-body movement that communicates attention, awareness and intent." It's also fairly cute.
The animal-esque robot is covered by a touch-sensitive coat and includes a series of cameras, along with a microphone array. This should allow it to interact with humans in a fairly normal way, which is helped along by an onboard AI stack that's "powered by a custom small multimodal model optimized for social reasoning."
There isn't an actual product yet. The first Familiar is a working prototype and acts as a proof of concept. With that in mind, we don't know when or if the company will put something on store shelves or how much one of these fake pets will cost. As an aside, animal shelters will let you take home a cute critter for $50 to $125 bucks.