AI companion robots are getting cuter—and that could be the purpose

Colin Angle spent 30 years constructing robots that clear your flooring. Now he desires to create one which retains you firm. When I first heard that pitch, not gonna lie, I rolled my eyes a bit. The companion robots sector is a graveyard of excellent intentions. But the extra I sat with what Angle is definitely doing along with his new firm, Familiar Machines & Magic, the extra it began to make sense to me.

Angle is the co-founder of iRobot, the corporate behind the Roomba, which put 50 million family robots into properties worldwide. After iRobot’s failed sale to Amazon, he stepped down as CEO in 2024. What he’s constructed since then is a dog-sized robotic referred to as a Familiar — a intentionally unidentifiable creature that resembles one thing between a bear, a barn owl, and a canine. It has movable eyebrows, ears, and eyes. It purrs. It nudges you to go to mattress. According to IEEE Spectrum, Angle constructed it round what he calls “emotional work,” the sort of presence that retains individuals from feeling alone.

That’s an enormous swing. But right here’s why I feel he would possibly truly be onto one thing.

Why companion robots preserve failing (and the way Familiar is completely different

Bugs weren’t the issue. Early companion robots failed as a result of they had been chilly.
Past contenders embrace: Jibo, discontinued in 2019. Vector by Anki. Amazon’s Astro. Sony’s Aibo, which was candy however by no means greater than a novelty. These merchandise had {hardware} and software program. What they didn’t have was emotional weight. They felt like devices sporting a character as a dressing up — awkward and finally destined for a closet. Angle studied this. The Familiar doesn’t discuss (a deliberate alternative). It communicates by way of physique language, expression, and sound. “If this is a toy, we’ve failed,” Angle instructed The Verge. “If this is a creature that you want in your world, then we’ve knocked it out of the park.”

The lonliness epidemic and AI companion robots

The numbers on loneliness proper now are genuinely arduous to take a look at. According to Cigna’s 2025 Loneliness in America report, 57% of Americans report feeling lonely. The American Psychiatric Association discovered one in three Americans feels lonely each single week. And in a merciless irony, know-how tops the listing of what individuals blame for his or her isolation.

Angle’s reply isn’t one other display. It’s a bodily robotic that will get up and walks round your private home, follows you room to room, and nudges you off your telephone. “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 mentioned. Is {that a} assured repair? No. But it’s not less than participating with the appropriate downside.

A shirt in direction of tech merchandise with cute design

Design researcher Tobias van Schneider has written about what he calls the Kawaiization of product design—a deliberate transfer away from chilly minimalism towards emotionally resonant, cute aesthetics. Research backs this up: cuteness genuinely promotes calm and constructive emotional states. Duolingo constructed a whole model identification on an aggressive little owl. The Familiar takes its cue from the same logic. Its, not-quite-any-animal design is intentional. That approach, there’s no debate about what it ought to/shouldn’t be capable of do, no disappointment when it could’t fetch your slippers. Just an open door to connection.

The companion robotic market is already projected to surpass $2.4 billion by finish of 2025, per market research cited by IoT Marketing. We simply could be coming into an period the place AI that lives with you is simply as viable a class as AI that works for you.

The Familiar received’t be out there till subsequent yr on the earliest, and pricing remains to be obscure. There are actual questions left to reply—will individuals truly bond with it, or will it find yourself in a closet? And can emotionally delicate AI be a product class or only a very costly experiment?

But we’re at an odd second: lonelier than we’ve ever been, exhausted by screens, and more and more conscious that the know-how meant to attach us has carried out the alternative. If there was ever a time for a robotic that simply… sits with you, that could be now. I get why somebody is making an attempt to construct it.

Lauren has been writing and modifying since 2008. She loves working with textual content and serving to writers discover their voice. When she’s not typing away at her laptop, she cooks and travels together with her husband and two children.