Robohub.org
 

Jibo look-alike appears on Chinese websites


by
29 December 2016



share this:

For all of us who participated in the Jibo IndieGoGo crowdfunding and are anxiously awaiting delivery – which has been delayed again – this Chinese knock-off came as quite a surprise.

This little Jibo look-alike appears under the brand name Oding with a corresponding website (www.odingbot.com) and a parent company, EDGbot.com. Both companies are registered under a third: HiChina Zhicheng Technology. The odingbot.com website provides a lot of information about their product which is strikingly similar to the content on Jibo’s website

HiChina is registered as a wholesale supplier of electronics, apparel, home & garden, and gifts to customers in China.

Neither of the three sites indicate where to purchase a new Oding nor when they will become available or at what price.


Knock-offs and intellectual property theft

The Oding bot looks a lot like the original Jibo prototype which had a button up front and a slightly wider base than Jibo’s present iteration yet, in an email from Cynthia Breazeal, she affirmed that Odingbot has absolutely no connection with Jibo.

china-stop-stealing-our-stuff

A few years ago Bloomberg Businessweek magazine ran this cover along with a series of stories about stolen technology often copied from plans sent to Chinese contract manufacturers. Those stories appear to be just as true today.

No one should really be surprised. Asian versions of Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home have been launched and are already being sold in China. Now there’s a Jibo knock-off.

Jibo, the inventor and leader of the pack, just needs to ship. They obviously underestimated what it would take. The cancellation of their developer edition in November is particularly troublesome because no new date was offered. And regarding the consumer edition, for which I am in line waiting, who knows when those will ship.

As Tandy Trower of Hoaloha Robotics, the developer of software and services to support new “socially assistive” robot designs to help people manage day-to-day activities restricted by disease, injury, or aging, said: “This is why I don’t show my robot before its ready.”

Click here to visit The Robot Report.


If you enjoyed this article about robots and jobs, you may also want to read:

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.



tags: , , ,


Frank Tobe is the owner and publisher of The Robot Report, and is also a panel member for Robohub's Robotics by Invitation series.
Frank Tobe is the owner and publisher of The Robot Report, and is also a panel member for Robohub's Robotics by Invitation series.





Related posts :



Robots to the rescue: miniature robots offer new hope for search and rescue operations

  09 Sep 2025
Small two-wheeled robots, equipped with high-tech sensors, will help to find survivors faster in the aftermath of disasters.

#IJCAI2025 distinguished paper: Combining MORL with restraining bolts to learn normative behaviour

and   04 Sep 2025
The authors introduce a framework for guiding reinforcement learning agents to comply with social, legal, and ethical norms.

Researchers are teaching robots to walk on Mars from the sand of New Mexico

  02 Sep 2025
Researchers are closer to equipping a dog-like robot to conduct science on the surface of Mars

Engineering fantasy into reality

  26 Aug 2025
PhD student Erik Ballesteros is building “Doc Ock” arms for future astronauts.

RoboCup@Work League: Interview with Christoph Steup

and   22 Aug 2025
Find out more about the RoboCup League focussed on industrial production systems.

Interview with Haimin Hu: Game-theoretic integration of safety, interaction and learning for human-centered autonomy

and   21 Aug 2025
Hear from Haimin in the latest in our series featuring the 2025 AAAI / ACM SIGAI Doctoral Consortium participants.

AIhub coffee corner: Agentic AI

  15 Aug 2025
The AIhub coffee corner captures the musings of AI experts over a short conversation.

Interview with Kate Candon: Leveraging explicit and implicit feedback in human-robot interactions

and   25 Jul 2025
Hear from PhD student Kate about her work on human-robot interactions.



 

Robohub is supported by:




Would you like to learn how to tell impactful stories about your robot or AI system?


scicomm
training the next generation of science communicators in robotics & AI


 












©2025.05 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence