Overview
- Roomba creator Colin Angle took Familiar Machines & Magic out of stealth on Monday at The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything conference, unveiling a prototype ‘Familiar’ and calling it a technology preview rather than a product launch.
- The first model is a four-legged companion with 23 degrees of freedom, a touch-sensitive coat, cameras and microphones, and it uses a small multimodal AI model on the device to drive real-time social behavior.
- The robot makes pet-like sounds and does not speak, and it is built to offer presence and emotional connection instead of doing household chores.
- FM&M says core processing runs locally with no default cloud streaming, and optional logs are opt-in and deletable to give users clear control over data.
- Angle said he hopes to begin sales as soon as next year with mass production in Asia, but price, final form, and firm dates have not been disclosed.