There’s a new robot pet in town—or, at least, there will be—and it’s made by some of the same people who popularized the robot vacuum back in the early 2000s. Colin Angle, former iRobot CEO (and now cofounder, along with iRobot alums Ira Renfrew and Chris Jones, of robotics company Familiar Machines & Magic), has debuted a nonverbal companion called a “Familiar,” according to The Verge. Familiar Machines & Magic showcased two of its robots at the WSJ Future of Everything conference this week and plans to launch the pets next year.
“By design, it will avoid giving factual advice about things that maybe it shouldn’t be giving factual advice about,” Angle told The Verge’s Jennifer Pattison Tuohy in an interview. In other words, it can’t lie to you. Instead of talking, the robot will make nonverbal sounds and communicate via “expression and body language.” It’ll feature camera vision, multiple microphones and 23 degrees of movement via its four legs, head, and blinking eyes.
You can get a sense of how it will behave and move in a looping video on Familiar Machines & Magic’s website, which shows the pet giving a high-five, doing yoga with its owner, sitting and wagging its nub-like tail, leaning into a hug, and peering around a corner. The page calls it a “supportive presence that learns your household rhythms and goals, responds with care, and makes life a little more magical.” My dogs do most of those things, too, and can also climb stairs—which Familiars can’t, according to The Verge.
“Yeah, but they’re not dogs, Wes,” I can hear you all saying. “They’re robot pets.” I hear ya, and I’ll try to be a little more understanding. As for what Familiars are meant to resemble, well, they’re not. Familiars are “deliberately unidentifiable” because Familiar Machines doesn’t want people to have “preconceived ideas about their abilities,” writes Tuohy. Angle did reassure us, however, that the upcoming robot is “beautiful, wonderful to pet and give a hug to.”
Of course, he has to say that. He’s the guy selling the thing. When I look at it, I don’t see the squishy, warm meat of a real dog or cat. I see a robot in a fleece jacket, all servo motors and angles. That, or an albino honey badger. (Remember the early 2010s? Ha ha, me too.)
I’m unmoved by the pet robots currently on the market, but if I’m going to have one in my house, I’d rather it operate fully independently of an internet connection, and it sounds like the Familiar is at least going to fulfill that niche. Where other robot pets and robot vacuums might need Wi-Fi to do their AI bits, such as listening for natural language prompts, Familiars will be equipped with Nvidia’s Jetson Orin chip that Angle said is laden with a “custom small multimodal model optimized for social reasoning, combining vision, audio, language, and memory to create socially responsive behaviors in real time.” That’s the same chip family that drives the Matic robot vacuum, which moves more naturally and fluidly than any robot vacuum I’ve ever tested and needs no internet connection to be fully functional.
The two Familiars that Familiar Machines & Magic showcased on stage at WSJ’s conference were partially controlled by humans, but Angle said they’ll be autonomous when they’re released next year, according to The Verge. Reportedly, he didn’t offer specific pricing, saying it would be in line with “pet ownership costs.” Oh, he also stated that people are more interested in Familiars than in the original Roomba, which is quite a claim.
That kind of ambition isn’t altogether surprising, however, given the high-minded nature of Familiar Machines’ goals for its robot pets. As Tuohy writes, Angle hinted that its products could help with kids or support older adults who can no longer care for pets themselves. Also, they might somehow get their owners to stop looking at their phones and seek out more face time with human beings. I’m no more convinced that will work than Tuohy, who notes how hard it is to get her teen away from TikTok. I doubt I’d stop playing my little metroidvanias on my Switch 2 just because a fuzzy little robot started annoying me. But then, I suppose we’ll see about that next year, if this thing truly does roll out then.
