Roomba Creator Colin Angle Unveils AI Robot Companion That Learns Your Daily Habits

Meet the AI Familiar That Wants to Fix Your Daily Routine

Two years ago, Colin Angle stepped down as CEO of iRobot, the company that he co-founded and the most successful home robot company the world has ever seen. Angle almost immediately founded a stealthy new "physical AI" company called Familiar Machines & Magic (FM&M), which in short order managed to attract a combination of exceptionally talented robotics folks, including Morgan Pope from Disney Research, which got us very curious. Today, Familiar Machines & Magic is announcing its first robot, a "physically embodied AI system designed to perceive, adapt, and interact with people in ways that feel natural and consistent," the press release says. This robot is not a toy, and it's not specifically for kids. Rather, it's for adults to purchase for themselves and their families. It will get to know you, seek you out for attention, and actively help you to positively pursue an idealized routine in your life. Here are the (limited) technical details from the press release: The first Familiar is a quadruped, specifically designed for human-robot interaction, with 23 degrees of freedom enabling both lifelike movement and expressive behaviors. The Familiar is covered with a custom touch-sensitive coat, a vision system, and a microphone array and audio system, to support rich interactions. 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. FM&M CEO and co-founder Colin Angle tells us that this first prototype Familiar is designed to look like a sort of highly abstracted bear. It's very deliberately nothing like a dog or a cat, following the successful strategy of other social robots like Paro and Pleo -- if you can't connect the form factor to an animal that you have direct experience with, you won't bring expectations to your interactions with the robot. "Our goal is to position this as a robot familiar that lives with you and helps reinforce healthy routines," Angle says. He explains that thinking of a Familiar like a pet is a strong analogy, but pet-like also undersells what the robot can do. The Familiar behaves a little more like a service animal, in the narrow sense of being able to recognize activities and intervene to motivate you to do more or less of them, as the case may be. One easy example is screen time -- the Familiar can note how much time you spend on your phone, and if it's too much, it can actively try to engage you in other activities, including taking it for a walk outside. "The idea," says Angle, "is that you can have a bit of technology in your home which is hyper-loyal to you, gets to know you, helps you figure out an idealized routine, and then plays a positive role." Cramming this amount of intelligence into a robot that you can take for a walk outside (at regular human walking pace) is extremely ambitious. I asked FM&M's creative director Morgan Pope what made him feel like a robot like a Familiar was possible, with enough confidence that he was willing to leave Disney Research to join the startup. "Two recent advancements made it feel tractable," Pope says. "First, seeing Disney's bipedal robots walk flexibly over various terrain using reinforcement learning proved you can execute dynamic motion without needing perfect, zero-backlash actuators or crazy expensive hardware. And second, while I am often skeptical of generative AI hype, it is a perfect fit here because it excels at creating the plausible assumption of intelligence, which helps the character feel coherent and lifelike." As a social home robot, the Familiar will have quite a lot of work to do to single-pawedly reestablish a category that burned itself out between 2012 and 2019. A series of high profile and very well funded startups including Anki, Mayfield, and Jibo were not able to sustain social home robots as a business, primarily because of a struggle with longer-term engagement. It's not enough for a robot to be cute and charming in the short term; it has to continue enthralling its users or at least providing value after the initial novelty has worn off. In other words, a flashy demo is arguably counterproductive, which is a real problem, since robots excel at flashy demos. "It's about creating the right expectation and delivering on that expectation," says Angle. "Familiars live in your world and play by your rules, and if you don't find yourself hanging out with it, petting it, and engaging with it, then we haven't succeeded." In what is very much not a coincidence, the term 'familiar' really is the best way of thinking about this robot -- a sort of vaguely magical non-human entity that has some amount of independence but whose existence and motivation are fundamentally tied to its human. "This isn't trying to be a replacement for a real friend," Angle explains. "It's artificial life that lives in your world, has its own personality and goals, and has a special link to its guardian where it wants attention and wants its guardian to be active." This philosophy is a key differentiator for FM&M. A Familiar is more than a companion; it has long-term objectives that it's trying to fulfill to improve your life in a targeted way, says Angle. It'll attempt to connect with you socially to encourage you to spend time with it in service of those goals, but the goals are the end, er, goals, rather than just the social connection itself, which was the primary draw of the previous generation of social robots. "Within a few days of bringing your Familiar home," Angle tells us, "it's figured out what its role in your life is. It's trying to reinforce a healthy routine, whether that be summoning people to dinner or cuddling up while you watch TV, or greeting you when you get home. And then the way you sustain that relationship is by having it evolve, with both characters playing an active role -- you're also helping it with the things required to keep a robot operating." The temptation to leverage recent advances in AI to make a robot like a Familiar talk, especially in the context of regularly interacting with humans in pursuit of specific goals, must have been overwhelming. But to their credit, FM&M managed to resist. "I don't believe that the technology exists today for AI to talk to humans in a safe, responsible fashion," Angle explains. Consequently, a Familiar does not currently speak, although it does make sounds, and has plenty of other ways of communicating. "Through careful design, you'd be amazed what you can powerfully convey using a tail, wiggly ears, blinking eyes, and a brow that can be happy, sad, angry, or annoyed," Angle says. This will likely resonate strongly with dog owners, somewhat less strongly with cat owners, and only very slightly with reptile owners like myself. Going the other direction is more complicated. Those same recent advances in AI mean that a Familiar can very likely understand everything you say and obey you perfectly, if it chose to. But doing so would break the illusion that the robot has its own desires and goals and personality, so FM&M had to be careful. "The way we've trained it from an AI perspective is really cool," Angle explains. "We're using a tableau of speech and vision inputs presented to a small multimodal model trained on stories, and for a given tableau of inputs, it goes through a generative process to decide at a high level what it is going to do. That decision is handed to a behavior engine which builds out those behavior trees into goals and drives a reinforcement learning unified motion model. There is nothing fully deterministic about your Familiar's behavior; it truly tries to live its life with a variety of personality-driven emotions." A Familiar is not a big robot, as robots go, but it's not exactly small, either. And as something with legs, there's always a concern about what happens if it falls over. "Its low center of gravity helps immensely," says Pope. "If we pull power, it collapses downward safely rather than tipping over. Furthermore, it is wrapped in soft rubber, fur, and padding, so even if a leg impacts you, it won't have a lot of force behind it." Interestingly, FM&M is also leveraging the 'character experience' to mitigate risks to both robot and user. "We can use emotions to communicate hazards effectively," explains Pope. "For example, if someone carries it somewhere high or puts it near an open flame, the Familiar can act visibly scared to directly communicate that it doesn't like the situation." Besides physical safety, social robots must also consider emotional safety. The better job you do emotionally connecting with people, the more responsibility you have to make sure that those connections are positive. "We take this very seriously," Pope tells us. "We must follow a 'do no harm' philosophy, ensuring we don't trigger unhealthy dependency or monopolize people's attention the way a phone does. We are designing carefully to ensure the overall impact remains positive and never crosses the line into harm." Additionally, the Familiar's AI runs onboard the robot, and the robot does not stream private data to the cloud. It will, in fact, run just fine if you disconnect it from the Internet entirely, although you'll lose access to any new features that come out. Alongside the many engineering and HRI challenges that FM&M is having to manage is one other challenge that, in the near term, sounds rather dull but may be the most challenging: marketing. The company obviously has to promote this robot, but there's a real danger (which has had dire consequences for many robotics companies in the past) of selling an idea of what the robot could be rather than the reality of what the robot actually is. From speaking with Pope, FM&M seems to understand that robots have always been the most successful when the experience or task is incidental to the robot itself -- in other words, what's most compelling is what the robot will do, rather than the fact that it's a robot. "The best way to understand a Familiar is that we are not building a robot; we are building a relationship," Pope explains. Whether in the context of locomotion or relationships, we can be absolutely certain that a robot of this level of sophistication is not going to do what it's supposed to every single time. Fortunately, the folks at FM&M have been building robots for long enough that they're prepared for this. "We've explicitly tried to design it to motivate forgiveness," Angle tells us. "This is not a precise robotic entity in its motion or dexterity. It's supposed to be imperfect, but it's going to get some of it right. By actively working to manage expectations to a place we can achieve, we want consumers to appreciate what it can do." What customers expect, what they appreciate, and how much forgiveness they're willing to bestow is for better or worse highly dependent on how much a Familiar will cost. "For the cost of ownership of something like a pet, you're getting something that can help you live a healthier life, feel attended to, and provide social benefit," Angle says. This could mean many things, depending on the pet, but one source puts the low end of the monthly cost for a cat at around $65 per month, with a dog somewhat more expensive at closer to $100 per month. FM&M's press release stresses that today's announcement 'is not a commercial product launch,' and specific pricing and a timeline will come later. While it's much too early for us to be speculating about what the future might hold for FM&M's robots, Angle is of course already thinking about other places where Familiars might be at home. "This first robot is meant to be a platform with general appeal and an opportunity to specialize into things like elder care and parental support," Angle says. "From the ground up we are designing machines focused on human connection, and the underlying technology can further generalize into other form factors." This will require the Familiar to find success, and it's important to reiterate how much of a challenge this will be. A legged robot, designed for human interaction, in the home -- everything about what FM&M is doing is hard. Because of his experience launching and leading iRobot, Angle is one of the very few people with the experience to really understand this, but his excitement and optimism about the Familiar is undiminished. "Do we know exactly how it's going to land? I don't," says Angle. "But do I think it's going to work? Absolutely. We're going to find out, with a mission and goals that are noble at heart."

Roomba Inventor Now Wants You to Own an AI Robot Pet

The former iRobot CEO and brains behind the Roomba is back with a new robotic concept, but it's not a household appliance. Colin Angle, now CEO and co-founder of Familiar Machines & Magic, has unveiled his next venture: AI robot pets. As reported earlier this week by The Verge, the AI robot companions known as Familiars were unveiled at The Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything conference. A Familiar resembles a stuffed toy with a microphone, vision and audio system. It has a plush coat and stands on four legs, and it is intended for social interaction and companionship -- similar to having a real-life pet. The company's website describes Familiars as an ideal companion for those who want a pet but can't own one. The robots are meant to be nonjudgmental listeners, engage kids in play and respond with affection (such as nuzzling and tail wagging) based on body language, facial expressions and tone of voice. When we reached out for comment, a Familiar Machines & Magic spokesperson told CNET that getting a Familiar "has nothing to do with replacing pets." "Pets and Familiars do completely different things, and households can benefit from one or both," the spokesperson said, suggesting that those who would benefit the most from them are "people who would value an emotionally intelligent presence in the home and aren't waiting for science fiction to show up." These robots are meant to appear natural and emotionally intelligent, with their own personalities and the ability to learn and adapt to the environment and the habits of the people around them, according to a statement. Familiars are aware of your patterns and will encourage you to break bad habits, such as spending too much time on your phone. According to The Verge, Angle told the publication that Familiars also cannot lie. "By design, it will avoid giving factual advice about things that maybe it shouldn't be giving factual advice about," he said. Instead, it will communicate with you through nonverbal sounds and body language. As with any AI feature or device, privacy concerns arise. According to a statement, the company plans to keep your data private by avoiding cloud-dependent AI systems. Instead, data remains on the device. The company states that it has clear data governance guardrails for its systems intended for daily use. Although the cost for Familiars is unclear, they will be available next year, and those interested in reserving their own robotic pet can join a waitlist on the website.

The creator of Roomba is back with a furry robot companion

Colin Angle, the maker of the Roomba and the man who helped put 50 million household robots into people's homes, is back with a new robot. But this one is designed as a companion, not a cleaner. The first robot from Angle's new company, 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 company calls it a "Familiar," a name meant to evoke folklore around the idea of a supernatural companion. Based on a demo video I saw ahead of its appearance at the WSJ Future of Everything conference this week, the quadruped robot can move around your home on all fours independently, like a pet. The Familiar is a "physically embodied AI system" that will use generative AI, via an on-device model, to engage with its owner with the intent of forming an emotional connection and develop "a distinct personality," Angle told me in an interview. Robots that can react and respond to humans should, in theory, be more effective serving in what Angle calls "high human connection roles," such as companionship, entertainment, hospitality, smart home, eldercare, and parental support. "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 first Familiar won't be available to buy until next year at the earliest, and will cost "around the same as pet ownership," Angle said. Its exact features are also still under wraps, but Angle says initial use cases are focused on families with young children, companionship for the elderly, and addressing the global loneliness epidemic. It's a bold move for a man who built a career on robots that clean floors. Angle says his entire three-decade career in robotics has led to this moment. The original name for iRobot, founded in 1990, was Artificial Creatures Inc. But back then, the tech to create artificial 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, along with cofounders (and iRobot veterans) Ira Renfrew and Chris Jones, have assembled a team of roboticists and engineers from Disney, MIT, Boston Dynamics, Amazon, Bose, and Sonos. Their goal is to create a robot that is not just a toy or a chatbot slapped into a piece of plastic, as we saw everywhere at CES this year. From the get-go, the team dismissed the idea of a humanoid robot, believing it unnecessarily complicated for their purpose. Ami is a deliberately unidentifiable creature because, Angle says, if you create a specific animal or form-factor, people will have preconceived ideas about its abilities. They also decided not to have the Familiar talk. Instead, it will make nonverbal sounds -- the two units shown 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 toward the hot water LLM-powered chatbots keep getting themselves in. Primary communication will be through expression and body language, aided by a camera-based vision system and microphone array. With 23 degrees of freedom, the robot can move its head, neck, ears, eyes, and eyebrows, and walk at a slow human pace, but it can't grip things or climb stairs. Its four legs provide stability, which should help with concerns around the robot falling and damaging property or injuring people. Familiar Machines' goal is to use AI to create a robot that can learn from its owners, remember patterns, and adapt to their routines, with the aim of fostering long-term engagement, says Angle. They want to avoid being stuck in a closet or falling victim to the fate of dozens of earlier home robots (see Jibo, Aibo, Vector, Astro, etc.). "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 internet connection, although it can be connected, and it doesn't stream audio or video to the cloud, a purposeful design decision to protect privacy and improve latency. However, it's still a device with cameras and mics in your family space. So, why would anyone want this robot in their home? While Angle is coy about specifics, since the robot is still in development, he says an AI-powered companion could help address the growing problem of loneliness and provide an alternative to technology that keeps 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 attempts at companion robots so far fail the "plate of glass" test, 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 Ami is designed to interact with you, including nudging you and hugging you. It also has a "luxurious" touch-sensitive coat, says Angle. The video demo I saw of Ami showed a boy putting down his tablet to pet it, a man deciding to stop doomscrolling and go to bed after a nudge from the robot, an elderly woman walking Ami, and a younger woman doing yoga next to it. The idea is that if it encourages you to do things other than being on a screen or sitting alone at home, you're more likely to engage with other people. While more non-screen-based interactive technology could be an antidote to our screen-obsessed society, it's an extremely tenuous link to more human interaction. It's going to take a lot more than a robotic pet to unglue my teenager from TikTok. And it is still a robot, not a human you are interacting with. By offering a substitute for some aspects of human companionship, it could just as easily become as big a barrier to real social interaction as screens are. Assuming Angle and his team can pull off the robotic and personality parts, success will still depend heavily on how consumers respond to bringing a robot into their homes. And how much it costs. The first Roomba was a hit because it cost under $200 and vacuumed the floor. "Pet ownership costs" is a dizzyingly broad range. While Angle claims interest in the Familiar is "higher than what we saw with Roomba," the lack of a clear purpose feels like a problem. The strongest use cases Angle hinted at are as a parent support tool -- a device that interacts with your children when you can't and is better than a tablet or TV screen -- and as elder support, helping alleviate loneliness and managing routines for medication and movement. The latter is similar to one of the few successful companion robots so far, Intuition Robotics' ElliQ. (Angle is on the company's board). Many people will look at this Familiar concept and say, "I'd rather have a real dog or a cat." As a devoted pet owner, I know I would prefer to give my cat snuggles, walk my dog, or hang out with my chickens than spend time with a machine. Angle points out that there are many reasons people can't have pets, sharing a statistic that claims pet ownership declines to just 9 percent after age 68, when it can become harder for someone to care for an animal. For those who want an animal companion but for whatever reason can't have one, the Familiar could be an interesting alternative. Angle demoed two Familiars on stage at the WSJ conference, showing them moving around, walking, and interacting with people, and making meowing and purring noises. The units were partially operator-controlled and partially autonomous. Angle didn't say to what extent, but he says the Familiar will be fully autonomous by the time it launches next year. "This is a demo, but it's a demo on its way to a product; we're already in factories," he told the audience. But even then, it's not clear how close it will be to Angle's vision. These are very big promises in a field filled with failures and sky-high expectations, and all we've seen so far are tightly controlled demos. What is clear is that Angle believes his team has already made significant strides towards their vision of creating artificial 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."

One of iRobot's co-founders is now making weird little robot companions - Engadget

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.

Roomba pioneer aims to crack the household market again with an AI-powered pet robot

The robotics pioneer who helped unleash the Roomba vacuum is now betting that you might one day replace your beloved dog or cat with a plush robot that follows you around your home and adapts to your daily habits. Colin Angle unveiled a four-legged prototype of that artificial pet, called the Familiar, on Monday. Imagine a creature the size of a bulldog with doe-like eyes and bear cub ears and paws, extending itself into a greeting stretch that invites you to pat its touch-sensitive fake fur. "We chose a form factor that's not a human, not a dog, not a cat, because we wanted to steer away from all of those preconceptions," said Angle, who leads the startup Familiar Machines & Magic and before that was longtime CEO of Roomba maker iRobot. This kind of lifelike machine -- powered by the latest artificial intelligence technology -- would not have been possible when Angle co-founded iRobot in 1990 or launched the first Roomba in 2002. It's hardly the first effort to build a pet-like household robot. Japanese electronics giant Sony, for one, famously introduced a small plastic robotic dog called Aibo in the late 1990s and rebooted the concept in 2018. But Angle believes the Familiar achieves something that "simply hasn't existed before." "The challenge is to make something that's not a watch-me toy," Angle said in an interview with The Associated Press. "This is about having something that you want to hug, you want to pet. When it's happy, that makes you happy. And it is large enough or mobile enough to follow you to the kitchen or drag you off the couch and take a walk." Angle said the robot will make emotive, animal-like sounds but won't talk. But, mimicking a real pet, it has audio input "ears" and an AI system that can understand and learn from what you say to it. It benefits from the advances in generative AI sparked by chatbots like ChatGPT and can gradually adapt its behavior as it learns from the people around it. "I couldn't have done this six months ago," Angle said. Angle led iRobot for a quarter century as it turned Roomba into the first widely adopted home robot. Intense competition, especially from China, later threatened its success. Angle stepped down as CEO and chairman in 2024 after Amazon dropped its plan to buy the struggling Massachusetts company. Familiar Machines was born soon after and remained in "stealth" mode in Woburn, Massachusetts until Monday, when Angle brought one of his Familiar prototypes to New York for The Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything conference. It could take a while before Angle starts selling the machines, but one target demographic is retired people who are past the peak age of pet ownership. "Not because people suddenly stop enjoying pets, but the fear and obligation of caring for them are such that people are very reluctant to get new pets at older ages," Angle said. While most robot engineers take inspiration from science fiction, the idea of a familiar has deep roots in folklore, from a witch's cat and wizard's owl to the animal companions in Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" fantasy novels. "It's an archaic, ancient word," Angle said. To his surprise, he could also trademark it. Angle has pulled together a number of prominent robotics advisers, including Marc Raibert, a pioneer of robot locomotion who founded Boston Dynamics, maker of the four-legged Spot robot; and Cynthia Breazeal, who invented the robot head Kismet and later the tabletop speaker robot Jibo, early attempts at imbuing robots with social expressions. Many researched together at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and share skepticism for the current fad of sleek humanoid robots that are designed to walk and move around like people but can't yet do much useful physical work. One of those advisers is Maja Matarić, a computer science professor at the University of Southern California who 25 years ago co-founded the field of socially assistive robotics -- with the aim of designing robots that could give people social and emotional support. When she first saw Angle's prototype, she said she "immediately got down on the ground near it and had to hug it and pet it, then started to play with it to see what it would do." That people perceive the robot as adorable and not creepy will be key. Matarić said decades of research into human-robot interactions have shown that a robot that is "cute, personalized and vulnerable is much more appealing and lovable than the alternative." It could be particularly useful in nursing homes or providing emotional support for mental health, she said. Matarić said AI advances have also made it easier to broaden the impact to the general population. "Before generative AI, robots could not readily understand what people were saying," she said.

New social pet robot uses local AI to learn complex human behavior

This setup combines vision, audio, language, and memory in real time. The goal is to create behavior that evolves through repeated interaction. Angle said, "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 added, "Today, we're emerging from stealth to share our vision for systems that move beyond task execution and become a natural part of daily life." Most investment in physical AI targets industrial use. Companies focus on robots that lift, sort, or transport goods. That market continues to grow rapidly. Angle's team sees a different opportunity. They aim to build machines that people interact with daily. That requires a different design philosophy. Consumer-facing robots must understand context and emotion. They must respond in ways that feel intuitive. According to the company, physical presence plays a key role in this. FM&M argues that embodied systems can outperform screen-based AI in emotional tasks. People respond more strongly to physical agents than to chatbots. The team behind the project brings experience from major tech and robotics groups. Their background includes work at Disney Research, MIT, Amazon, and Boston Dynamics. Angle positioned the new robot as a step beyond earlier consumer machines. "iRobot proved that robots could deliver value at scale," he said. "But they were still task machines."

Roomba inventor unveils a companion robot that's more pet than helper

It looks like a cross between a bear, a dog, and a Furby. Credit: Familiar Machines & Magic At this point, most home robots are either glorified vacuums or far-off concepts that may never become commercially available. However, we just got a look at a new home companion robot potentially coming to market next year, and its inventor has a proven track record of putting robots into homes. Colin Angle, co-founder of Roomba maker iRobot, fully unveiled his new company Familiar Machines & Magic at the Wall Street Journal's The Future of Everything event this week. FM&M's goal is to make home robots that act more as emotional companions than chore machines. Its debut product is a four-legged robot companion codenamed Ami (per The Verge). The robot looks like a cross between a dog and a bear, and it's designed to spark a connection with its human owner. "The next era of robotics is not just about dexterity or humanoid form -- it's about machines that can build and sustain human connection," Angle said, per an official press release. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. Ami probably won't launch until next year at the earliest, and we don't have a price point yet, but it's still quite fascinating to look at. In addition to its Roomba pedigree, a Familiar Machines & Magic press release states that the company's employees have also worked with Disney Research, MIT, Amazon, Boston Dynamics, Bose, and Sonos. The robot animal has 23 degrees of freedom and can move its head, ears, and eyes. According to The Verge, it can't grasp objects or climb stairs, which would severely limit its usefulness, if it existed to be useful, anyway. It uses on-device generative AI to learn about its owner and respond to the owner's needs on an emotional level. One very important detail is that it doesn't speak, instead purring and making other pet-like noises. A pet seems to be the best point of comparison here, as the robot seems almost totally incapable of performing practical tasks, and instead exists to make people feel less lonely. Some other crucial points include a touch-sensitive coat that should, in theory, be pleasurable to pet, and onboard cameras and microphones that help the robot react to situations without streaming that audio or video anywhere. It doesn't have to connect to the internet to work. The idea of using AI to cure the loneliness epidemic isn't necessarily new or without merit, even if it can sometimes feel a bit dystopian. Last year, Mashable reported on a service that allowed the elderly to talk to an AI over the phone, just for the sake of providing company. Multiple companies are creating AI-powered robot companions for elder care applications, including startups like ElliQ and Abi. Anthropomorphizing robots and artificial intelligence can be dangerous, especially given what we know about AI psychosis. However, some experts believe that companion robots could prove beneficial in specific settings.

'This is the robot I wanted to build forever': former iRobot chief on his extraordinary 'Familiar' AI companion

Twice now, over the last 24 years, Colin Angle has surprised me. I'm not talking bemusement or nodding appreciation. Think jaw-dropping moments when I felt the earth shift a bit under my feet. The first time was in 2002 when he unveiled the iRobot Roomba, a rather basic-looking but shockingly effective robot vacuum, and the second was today, when he showed me a video of his new companion robot, the dog-sized Familiar. Angle and I have spent decades talking about the robot revolution, or rather, having frank discussions about the reality of that not-quite-yet-here robot uprising. He's the one who cautioned me years ago that functional home humanoid robots wouldn't arrive until 2050. And when he rang me up to talk about his new product under the banner of "Familiar Machines and Magic", I wondered if perhaps he, too, had drunk the Kool-Aid and now believed that humanoid robots like Tesla Optimus, Neo Beta 1, and Figure 03 were all ready to join me in my kitchen or living room. I needn't have worried. "Guess what I'm not building? Humanoids. I'm sure you're shocked by this revelation," Angle laughed. "I think humanoids make a lot of sense in industrial settings -- I joined the board of directors of Boston Dynamics, ...I believe the humanoids have a place. But [it's] going to be a long time before that place is the home," said Angle. Angle had yet to reveal the product, and now I thought it might be a desk-bound puck that you could talk to -- I could hardly hide my disappointment. Then Angle showed me the video. But before he played it, her offered this clarification, "The robots here are real -- none of this is CGI. Just as a disclaimer, because it's necessary. " Seeing the astonishing Familiar for the first time In the video, a medium-sized dog-like creature peers from around a wall into a living room where an elderly mother and adult daughter sit. It's black eyes blink expressively, and its pointed ears wiggle. Then it pads over on large, almost bear-like paws. The neutral-colored fur moves naturally, and its motion is fluid and lifelike. One woman in the video pets the robot. In another scene, the robot reaches its paw up and pats the owner in an effort to get his attention. I'm both excited and concerned. I've seen robots like this before, though perhaps never at this scale. Where the Sony Aibo is the size of a large chihuahua, this bot, which Angle says is called a "Familiar," is the size of a collie or smaller golden retriever. The video ends, and Angle excitedly starts rattling off specs. "[it has] 23° of freedom. Got an [Nvidia] Jensen Orin processor on it. It has vision, it has array microphones. It is running full-stack AI with reinforcement learning at the bottom layer. It has memory formation capabilities." Included in that are a variety of AI models, which will give the Familiar the ability to take its base personality and learn and grow with you. When I ask Angle which models, he tells me it's a mix of homegrown and third-party, but also acknowledges that it's far from final. "Every month, there's a best model, and it has changed month-to-month, so I actually can't answer that question yet," he added. All the benefits of rapid change Things, though, are moving fast, and like much of the rest of the robotics industry, Angle's company is benefiting from "AI Time." "What you can do with a small software team and AI programming tools. It is remarkable...what we're doing was, in fact, impossible 6 months ago," said Angle. Angle's Familair robot doesn't cook, clean, fold laundry, or talk. The goal isn't removing human home maintenance drudgery. It's connection. "Our goal is to build physical AI solutions that involve human connection and the challenges that we're working to solve, aligning the physical embodiment with the expectations that are needed to create value," explained Angle. The focus on value goes back to Angle's days as co-founder and CEO of iRobot. Basically, any robot must provide more long-term value than it costs. This is how it avoids ending up in the closet. Angle worries that humanoid robots, which are currently extremely expensive, "set expectations insanely high. There's an expectation of dexterity that's necessary. There's an expectation of understanding and comprehension that are well beyond the capabilities of AI and robotics today." The Roomba robot vacuum, which initially sold for just $199, was the perfect blend of value and utility, and it met expectations. Of the millions of units sold, few were relegated to the closet. They were never pretty or expressive, but they sure could clean a rug. "One of the things that made Roomba successful was it found a way to get out of the closet and be used on a routine basis, and thus it had enduring value and was respected as such," said Angle. When Angle thought about how to bring value to the robot/AI/human equation, he and his team of former iRobot employees and advisors with backgrounds from places like MIT and Boston Dynamics, thought of pets. He reminded me that people pet their animals for more than an hour each day. "So pets had, in fact, succeeded in finding a long-term role. Now, of course, they're not robots, but, you know, it's an interesting prove point." It's not quite a dog The Familair, as we'll call it, is far closer to a pet than a humanoid robot. Its triangular face evokes a cat, but its substantial body is of another species. Angle told me a lot of thought went into that design, "Obviously, we didn't want to be evocative of humans. We also didn't want to be evocative of a dog or a cat, and so ...actually, abstract bear is what we were going for." Of course, a robot of this size can be heavy, loud, expensive, and such a massive drain on battery life that it's scarcely useful as a toy or companion. Angle holds up what looks like a piece of plastic, telling me it was one of the first things his company created and is, in a way, the foundation of the Familiar Machines & Magic AI companion. "This is a 3D printed object...is an actuator with an encoder and a gearbox on it that was manufacturable at prices that would allow this Familiar to exist. The entire scale of the robot is based on this." It's a critical and apparently affordable piece of quickly manufacturable hardware to build and scale the bot, and let it move and act in ways that elicit a reaction from anyone who sees it. "It's kind of like taking something beyond the animatronics you'd see at Disney, making it not man in the loop, but actually autonomous and then selling at consumer price points," added Angle. Of course, it's not just the movement, but the entire look of the thing. The white and tan fur (an early choice, and there will be quite a few coat color choices in the future) looks soft, malleable, and takes that collection of 3D-printed motors and makes a symphony of artificial life. "You wonder why all these robots are hard. It's because putting a fuzzy skin on them is an incredible challenge. This is a 3D knit coat, where we're able to digitally specify the shape. How much plush there is. Where is it nice to pet? Where do we need airflow to come in, to make sure it stays cool?" said Angle. Part of the solution for mass-producing this kind of artificial skin and fur came from, of all places, the shoe industry, which showed them how to "extend into really weird directions for creating mass manufacturable, materials of arbitrary shape and physical characteristics." Don't expect a chatbot Unlike many AI companions and assistants, the Familiar never speaks, only making vaguely animal sounds, an unsurprising choice when you consider how you'd feel if your Doberman started chatting you up. Still, Angle told me this robot will be, like any good pet, emotionally aware. "Within the first few minutes of experiencing it, you should be able to understand that it is expressing understandable behavior. If it's trying to get your attention, if it's trying to get picked up, if it's trying to get you to take it for a walk," said Angle. And, yes, this robot, which should be lighter than a comparably-sized dog, can go for a walk inside or out, though keep it away from the rain. Battery life is unspecified beyond: it can do a walk and will go and charge itself when necessary. "It is always awake and alive even when it's recharging and has a substantial duty cycle during the day," explained Angle. Despite that always-on (and possibly a little creepy) nature, stereo cameras, and microphones, the Familair will not be a home-surveillance robot, at least not for now. "Certainly, that's not something that is viewed as a launch feature. This is not marketed as a security solution," said Angle. A robot companion of this magnitude, one that can connect with you at a deeper level, remember your interactions, identify family members, and grow and change with you, is a tall order. Would it cost thousands? Angle refused to be pinned down on price. Again, though, he returned to the concept of a pet. "This is not something that is designed only for the highest bracket income. If you can afford a pet, you can afford this," Angle promised. A Familiar coming-out party This week, Angle and his Familiar will make their public debut at the Wall Street Journal Future of Everything Conference in New York City on May 4. Angle told me it's likely that what conference attendees see and what I saw in the video a few weeks ago might be quite different. The team plans to keep working on the robot right up until the conference. After that, expectations will be set, and while Angle has known massive success with iRobot (before Amazon tried to buy them, failed, and almost destroyed the company -- Angle left), there are no guarantees here. When I ask Angle why the Familair might succeed where others have failed, he responded with some enthusiasm: "The fact that this isn't a toy. The fact that it is a supportive, aware presence in your home, which looks valuable, is expressive, and knows enough what's going on so that if you come home from work stressed out, it actually can come over and try to cheer you up." Angle has literally been dreaming of making the Familiar for longer than I've known him. "This is the robot I wanted to build forever," said Angle, adding at another point, "This thing has been kind of in my mind, under construction, for 30 years." Perhaps Angle's willingness to take the largest swings in a market littered with the corpses of failed AI and robot companions is rooted in how he sees himself. Angle told me his favorite character, a hero of his, is Dr. John Hammond from Jurassic Park. Right, the guy who brought back the dinosaurs and created the world's most dangerous theme park. Angle, though, sees a different lesson: Hammond just wanted to make his dream, his fantasy, real. "You know, he had lived his whole career with smoke and mirrors, and Jurassic Park was trying to give people real, and I think to, maybe, without the 'Don't build dinosaurs' -- that was his big misstep -- but I think the chance to build physical AI that is actually capable of satisfying and enduring human connection is now possible." Not only can Angle now make his how dreams real, but he thinks he can do it better than those who have come before it, who have relied too heavily on handing the reins over to AI and letting it operate in some "very challenging and questionable arenas," like privacy and security. "We can avoid all of this, and make something wonderful that allows the world to be a little bit more caring...it's just as concrete, needed, and valuable as Roomba ever was." Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button! And of course, you can also follow TechRadar on YouTube and TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.

The robotics pioneer of Roomba fame is now developing this 4-legged AI-powered robot

Colin Angle revealed a prototype of an artificial pet, called the Familiar. The robotics pioneer who helped unleash the Roomba vacuum is now betting that you might one day replace your beloved dog or cat with a plush robot that follows you around your home and adapts to your daily habits. Colin Angle unveiled a four-legged prototype of that artificial pet, called the Familiar, on Monday. Imagine a creature the size of a bulldog with doe-like eyes and bear cub ears and paws, extending itself into a greeting stretch that invites you to pat its touch-sensitive fake fur. "We chose a form factor that's not a human, not a dog, not a cat, because we wanted to steer away from all of those preconceptions," said Angle, who leads the startup Familiar Machines & Magic and before that was longtime CEO of Roomba maker iRobot. This kind of lifelike machine -- powered by the latest artificial intelligence technology -- would not have been possible when Angle co-founded iRobot in 1990 or launched the first Roomba in 2002. It's hardly the first effort to build a pet-like household robot. Japanese electronics giant Sony, for one, famously introduced a small plastic robotic dog called Aibo in the late 1990s and rebooted the concept in 2018. But Angle believes the Familiar achieves something that "simply hasn't existed before." "The challenge is to make something that's not a watch-me toy," Angle said in an interview with The Associated Press. "This is about having something that you want to hug, you want to pet. When it's happy, that makes you happy. And it is large enough or mobile enough to follow you to the kitchen or drag you off the couch and take a walk." Angle said the robot will make emotive, animal-like sounds but won't talk. But, mimicking a real pet, it has audio input "ears" and an AI system that can understand and learn from what you say to it. It benefits from the advances in generative AI sparked by chatbots like ChatGPT and can gradually adapt its behavior as it learns from the people around it. "I couldn't have done this six months ago," Angle said. Angle led iRobot for a quarter century as it turned Roomba into the first widely adopted home robot. Intense competition, especially from China, later threatened its success. Angle stepped down as CEO and chairman in 2024 after Amazon dropped its plan to buy the struggling Massachusetts company. Familiar Machines was born soon after and remained in "stealth" mode in Woburn, Massachusetts until Monday, when Angle brought one of his Familiar prototypes to New York for The Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything conference. It could take a while before Angle starts selling the machines, but one target demographic is retired people who are past the peak age of pet ownership. "Not because people suddenly stop enjoying pets, but the fear and obligation of caring for them are such that people are very reluctant to get new pets at older ages," Angle said. While most robot engineers take inspiration from science fiction, the idea of a familiar has deep roots in folklore, from a witch's cat and wizard's owl to the animal companions in Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" fantasy novels. "It's an archaic, ancient word," Angle said. To his surprise, he could also trademark it. Angle has pulled together a number of prominent robotics advisers, including Marc Raibert, a pioneer of robot locomotion who founded Boston Dynamics, maker of the four-legged Spot robot; and Cynthia Breazeal, who invented the robot head Kismet and later the tabletop speaker robot Jibo, early attempts at imbuing robots with social expressions. Many researched together at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and share skepticism for the current fad of sleek humanoid robots that are designed to walk and move around like people but can't yet do much useful physical work. One of those advisers is Maja Matarić, a computer science professor at the University of Southern California who 25 years ago co-founded the field of socially assistive robotics -- with the aim of designing robots that could give people social and emotional support. When she first saw Angle's prototype, she said she "immediately got down on the ground near it and had to hug it and pet it, then started to play with it to see what it would do." That people perceive the robot as adorable and not creepy will be key. Matarić said decades of research into human-robot interactions have shown that a robot that is "cute, personalized and vulnerable is much more appealing and lovable than the alternative." It could be particularly useful in nursing homes or providing emotional support for mental health, she said. Matarić said AI advances have also made it easier to broaden the impact to the general population. "Before generative AI, robots could not readily understand what people were saying," she said.

AI-powered robot pet dogs are the next Roomba's

TL;DR: Colin Angle, creator of the Roomba, introduces Familiar, an AI-powered, plush robotic pet designed for social interaction and emotional support. Equipped with sensors to read body language and tone, it encourages healthy habits while prioritizing privacy by keeping data on-device. Launch is planned for next year. Colin Angle, the man who brought us the Roomba, is now pushing the boundaries of robotic companionship with a plush, AI-powered pet robot. Dubbed a "Familiar," the four-legged, stuffed-like device is designed to interact socially, learning and adapting to household routines while offering emotional support. Angle's new venture, Familiar Machines & Magic, unveiled the AI robot pets at the Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything conference. These devices feature a full sensory suite, equipped with microphones, vision, and audio systems, and are built to read body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice. The Familiar responds with gestures like nuzzling and tail wagging and can even encourage healthier habits, such as reducing screen time. The company insists these robots aren't meant to replace real pets, but rather to serve those who can't own one. Angle emphasized that the Familiar will not give factual advice, but will instead use nonverbal cues to communicate. Privacy is also a focus, as data stays on the device, avoiding any periodic uploading to the cloud. Familiars are set to launch next year, with a waitlist already open. In a market increasingly crowded with AI companions and humanoid robots, Angle's latest creation offers a unique blend of emotional intelligence and functional design. Whether it becomes as popular as the Roomba remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure: the future will have robotic pets. In other news, an analyst has predicted that gamers wanting to buy a new console and Grand Theft Auto 6 when it releases in November this year may face a $1,000 price tag.

Roomba Pioneer Aims to Crack the Household Market Again With an AI-Powered Pet Robot

The robotics pioneer who helped unleash the Roomba vacuum is now betting that you might one day replace your beloved dog or cat with a plush robot that follows you around your home and adapts to your daily habits. Colin Angle unveiled a four-legged prototype of that artificial pet, called the Familiar, on Monday. Imagine a creature the size of a bulldog with doe-like eyes and bear cub ears and paws, extending itself into a greeting stretch that invites you to pat its touch-sensitive fake fur. "We chose a form factor that's not a human, not a dog, not a cat, because we wanted to steer away from all of those preconceptions," said Angle, who leads the startup Familiar Machines & Magic and before that was longtime CEO of Roomba maker iRobot. This kind of lifelike machine -- powered by the latest artificial intelligence technology -- would not have been possible when Angle co-founded iRobot in 1990 or launched the first Roomba in 2002. It's hardly the first effort to build a pet-like household robot. Japanese electronics giant Sony, for one, famously introduced a small plastic robotic dog called Aibo in the late 1990s and rebooted the concept in 2018. But Angle believes the Familiar achieves something that "simply hasn't existed before." "The challenge is to make something that's not a watch-me toy," Angle said in an interview with The Associated Press. "This is about having something that you want to hug, you want to pet. When it's happy, that makes you happy. And it is large enough or mobile enough to follow you to the kitchen or drag you off the couch and take a walk." Angle said the robot will make emotive, animal-like sounds but won't talk. But, mimicking a real pet, it has audio input "ears" and an AI system that can understand and learn from what you say to it. It benefits from the advances in generative AI sparked by chatbots like ChatGPT and can gradually adapt its behavior as it learns from the people around it. "I couldn't have done this six months ago," Angle said. Angle led iRobot for a quarter century as it turned Roomba into the first widely adopted home robot. Intense competition, especially from China, later threatened its success. Angle stepped down as CEO and chairman in 2024 after Amazon dropped its plan to buy the struggling Massachusetts company. Familiar Machines was born soon after and remained in "stealth" mode in Woburn, Massachusetts until Monday, when Angle brought one of his Familiar prototypes to New York for The Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything conference. It could take a while before Angle starts selling the machines, but one target demographic is retired people who are past the peak age of pet ownership. "Not because people suddenly stop enjoying pets, but the fear and obligation of caring for them are such that people are very reluctant to get new pets at older ages," Angle said. While most robot engineers take inspiration from science fiction, the idea of a familiar has deep roots in folklore, from a witch's cat and wizard's owl to the animal companions in Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" fantasy novels. "It's an archaic, ancient word," Angle said. To his surprise, he could also trademark it. Angle has pulled together a number of prominent robotics advisers, including Marc Raibert, a pioneer of robot locomotion who founded Boston Dynamics, maker of the four-legged Spot robot; and Cynthia Breazeal, who invented the robot head Kismet and later the tabletop speaker robot Jibo, early attempts at imbuing robots with social expressions. Many researched together at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and share skepticism for the current fad of sleek humanoid robots that are designed to walk and move around like people but can't yet do much useful physical work. One of those advisers is Maja Matarić, a computer science professor at the University of Southern California who 25 years ago co-founded the field of socially assistive robotics -- with the aim of designing robots that could give people social and emotional support. When she first saw Angle's prototype, she said she "immediately got down on the ground near it and had to hug it and pet it, then started to play with it to see what it would do." That people perceive the robot as adorable and not creepy will be key. Matarić said decades of research into human-robot interactions have shown that a robot that is "cute, personalized and vulnerable is much more appealing and lovable than the alternative." It could be particularly useful in nursing homes or providing emotional support for mental health, she said. Matarić said AI advances have also made it easier to broaden the impact to the general population. "Before generative AI, robots could not readily understand what people were saying," she said.

Roomba pioneer aims to crack the household market again with an AI-powered pet robot

The robotics pioneer who helped unleash the Roomba vacuum is now betting that you might one day replace your beloved dog or cat with a plush robot that follows you around your home and adapts to your daily habits. Colin Angle unveiled a four-legged prototype of that artificial pet, called the Familiar, on Monday. Imagine a creature the size of a bulldog with doe-like eyes and bear cub ears and paws, extending itself into a greeting stretch that invites you to pat its touch-sensitive fake fur. "We chose a form factor that's not a human, not a dog, not a cat, because we wanted to steer away from all of those preconceptions," said Angle, who leads the startup Familiar Machines & Magic and before that was longtime CEO of Roomba maker iRobot. This kind of lifelike machine -- powered by the latest artificial intelligence technology -- would not have been possible when Angle co-founded iRobot in 1990 or launched the first Roomba in 2002. It's hardly the first effort to build a pet-like household robot. Japanese electronics giant Sony, for one, famously introduced a small plastic robotic dog called Aibo in the late 1990s and rebooted the concept in 2018. But Angle believes the Familiar achieves something that "simply hasn't existed before." "The challenge is to make something that's not a watch-me toy," Angle said in an interview with The Associated Press. "This is about having something that you want to hug, you want to pet. When it's happy, that makes you happy. And it is large enough or mobile enough to follow you to the kitchen or drag you off the couch and take a walk." Angle said the robot will make emotive, animal-like sounds but won't talk. But, mimicking a real pet, it has audio input "ears" and an AI system that can understand and learn from what you say to it. It benefits from the advances in generative AI sparked by chatbots like ChatGPT and can gradually adapt its behavior as it learns from the people around it. "I couldn't have done this six months ago," Angle said. Angle led iRobot for a quarter century as it turned Roomba into the first widely adopted home robot. Intense competition, especially from China, later threatened its success. Angle stepped down as CEO and chairman in 2024 after Amazon dropped its plan to buy the struggling Massachusetts company. Familiar Machines was born soon after and remained in "stealth" mode in Woburn, Massachusetts until Monday, when Angle brought one of his Familiar prototypes to New York for The Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything conference. It could take a while before Angle starts selling the machines, but one target demographic is retired people who are past the peak age of pet ownership. "Not because people suddenly stop enjoying pets, but the fear and obligation of caring for them are such that people are very reluctant to get new pets at older ages," Angle said. While most robot engineers take inspiration from science fiction, the idea of a familiar has deep roots in folklore, from a witch's cat and wizard's owl to the animal companions in Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" fantasy novels. "It's an archaic, ancient word," Angle said. To his surprise, he could also trademark it. Angle has pulled together a number of prominent robotics advisers, including Marc Raibert, a pioneer of robot locomotion who founded Boston Dynamics, maker of the four-legged Spot robot; and Cynthia Breazeal, who invented the robot head Kismet and later the tabletop speaker robot Jibo, early attempts at imbuing robots with social expressions. Many researched together at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and share skepticism for the current fad of sleek humanoid robots that are designed to walk and move around like people but can't yet do much useful physical work. One of those advisers is Maja Matarić, a computer science professor at the University of Southern California who 25 years ago co-founded the field of socially assistive robotics -- with the aim of designing robots that could give people social and emotional support. When she first saw Angle's prototype, she said she "immediately got down on the ground near it and had to hug it and pet it, then started to play with it to see what it would do." That people perceive the robot as adorable and not creepy will be key. Matarić said decades of research into human-robot interactions have shown that a robot that is "cute, personalized and vulnerable is much more appealing and lovable than the alternative." It could be particularly useful in nursing homes or providing emotional support for mental health, she said. Matarić said AI advances have also made it easier to broaden the impact to the general population. "Before generative AI, robots could not readily understand what people were saying," she said.