Colin Angle, co-founder of iRobot, left the company in a somewhat abrupt manner after the breakdown of the Amazon agreement. However, the topic of home robotics has never disappeared from his mind, and in fact it has returned with a somewhat peculiar proposal. Does not clean floors. It has four legs, moving ears and is designed to make you get attached to it.
The story behind the return. Angle left iRobot in 2024, after the failure of its sale to Amazon and after almost three decades at the head of the company. Shortly after, he founded Familiar Machines & Magic with Ira Renfrew and Chris Jones, two iRobot veterans.
Last week at the Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything conference, he unveiled his first creation: a furry-looking quadruped robot they call “Familiar.” According to they counted told the WSJ, the choice of name comes from modern European folklore, where the term was used to describe supernatural animals that accompanied witches.
What exactly is it. The truth is that it is difficult to classify. He does not speak, he is not a smart speaker with legs, and it is not a typical robotic pet either (despite having a similar size). It has 23 degrees of freedom that allow you to move your head, neck, ears, eyes and eyebrows. It walks on all fours at a calm pace, cannot climb stairs or grab objects, and its communication with the user is completely non-verbal: it meows, purrs and expresses emotions through its body and face.
“By design, you will avoid giving factual advice on things that perhaps you shouldn’t give factual advice on,” explained Angle to The Verge, in a direct reference to the problems that chatbots based on large language models have.
Its face has been designed unrelated to any specific animal, and this decision is deliberate, because if the robot looked like a dog or a cat, the user would bring preconceived expectations that the robot might not be able to meet. So, yes, it is a somewhat complicated pet to describe.
What technology does it have inside? According to those responsible, the Familiar works with the chip Jetson Orin from Nvidia and a small, custom multimodal AI model that processes vision, audio, language and memory directly on the device, without sending data to the cloud. It has a camera, microphone and a touch-sensitive touch casing. It can work without an internet connection.
Morgan Pope, creative director of the company and former researcher at Disney Research, points out in an interview with IEEE Spectrum that were two recent advances that made the project viable: the use of reinforcement learning to achieve fluid movement without very expensive hardware, and the Generative AIwhich, in his words, “is perfect here because it creates the plausible assumption of intelligence, which helps the character feel coherent and alive.”
What is it for and who is it for? Curiously, the Familiar is not intended as a toy or as a home assistant. Its purpose, according to the companyis to reinforce healthy routines and actively accompany its user. Angle focuses above all on families with small children, older people who live alone or people who want to better manage their well-being.
The robot observes, learns and acts. The example that has been given is that, if it detects that you have been looking at your mobile screen for too long, it will try to get you to pay attention to it. Or if someone comes into the house carrying bags and in a hurry, they will know how to stay still and not get too angry.
AI is not designed to always obey you. “Training him to obey you perfectly would break the illusion that he has his own personality,” Angle explained. to IEEE Spectrum. The goal is for the robot to have its own goals, not to execute orders.
A history of failures. The trajectory of companion robots for the home has not been very encouraging to date. Jibo, Kuri, Anki Vectorhe Aibo original from Sony… they all promised something similar and they have all ended up being discontinued. The common denominator of their failures always ends up being the same: entertaining the first few days until they are forgotten in a closet.
Angle thinks AI can change the equation here. “If this ends up being a toy, we will have failed. If it is a creature you want in your world, we will have succeeded,” counted to The Verge.
We have questions. The robotic mascot presented at the WSJ event was a prototype that they controlled partially remotely, but Angle promise which will hit the market completely autonomously in 2027. The price, for now, is vaguely described as “similar to the cost of having a pet”, a range so wide that in practice it says nothing.
On the other hand, carrying a camera and microphone always on around your home raises some questions about privacy. Although the team states that data is not shared in the cloud, these are issues worth keeping in mind.
And now what. Familiar Machines & Magic has brought together talent from Disney Research, Boston Dynamics, MIT, Bose and Sonos. Angle has been wanting to build artificial life for thirty years since the time when iRobot’s original name was, precisely, Artificial Creatures Inc. The technology that did not exist then now exists. So now we need to know if they can materialize that promise into something that people want to have in their living room.
Images | Familiar Machines & Magic
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