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.

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.

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

Amazon’s Echo sales have exceeded 4 million and they are ramping up to sell 10 million in 2017; Google’s Home has received positive reviews and have just begun selling in large numbers; but SoftBank’s Pepper and Cynthia Breazeal’s Jibo have either failed or are stalled. Why?

The bots: Amazon Echo Alexa vs. Google Home

Amazon’s success with Echo has revealed a consumer acceptance of voice-controlled devices housing virtual digital assistants. Xiaoice, a Microsoft Chinese language bot, has millions of users and can identify photos and carry on playful discussions as if it were a real person. Xiaoice’s acceptance has confirmed that there is a broad user base for these types of bots. What Alexa proved is that there is a growing market of people willing to engage with internet services at home without a screen. That transition, to voice interactions and artificial intelligence, could be a predictor of what’s to come in the near future. Alexa doesn’t need Google. People talk to it and ask it about the weather or recipe ingredients; it looks up things to buy. They search with it. Wait! They search with their Alexa Echo? Google has spent years building intelligent voice assistants for phone and tablets, and now suddenly here’s Amazon  stealing its thunder. Hence the newly launched Google Home

Forbes recently compared Amazon’s $179 Echo to Google’s $129 Home:

“Amazon Echo has a ring of LED lights that tell the user when it’s listening and when it’s processing a request. Users can rotate the top of the device to control volume. There are two buttons on top of Echo: First is an action button for turning off a timer or alarm, or waking up the device for voice commands; the second is a mute button that turns the microphone off so it’s not listening.

Google Home has four colorful LED lights sitting on top that tell the user when it’s listening. It also has a bit more options for physical input: the top of the speaker has a touch surface for playing or pausing audio; changing volume; or starting requests. Like Echo, there is also a mute button.

Amazon Echo is powered by Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa. Echo wakes up to the word “Alexa” to begin taking your commands. Right off the bat, the device makes it easy to set timers or alerts, ask what the weather is, play music. Echo users can manage all the settings and features in an Alexa app. The app is also where users can enable and browse through so-called Skills — Amazon’s version of an Alexa app.

Google Home is running on Assistant, which is Google’s latest version of its virtual assistant for responding to users’ requests in a conversational manner. Users trigger Google Home with “OK, Google” or “Hey, Google” to start controlling it. It’s able to do the usual — set timers, tell the weather, play a song. But because Google has a lot of information on its users with access to calendars and emails, it can get to know users a lot more intimately than Amazon can right now.

Another important aspect of these two devices is how well they work as a platform for third-parties services and devices. Amazon’s Alexa has more than 3,000 “skills” and can do everything from summoning an Uber to ordering a pizza to turning up the temperature. Google is also creating a specialized developer kit with apps being called “Actions,” and which are separated into two types: Direct Actions and Conversational Actions. Direct Actions are for the kind of tasks that are straight forward — like turn on a light, or play a song on Spotify. Conversational Actions are for a bit more complicated requests like ordering an Uber, where there needs to be some back and forth happening — it needs to know where you want to go and what level of Uber service.”

Amazon’s Echo doesn’t sell in China. Nor does Google’s Home. Here are a few other bots, two of which sell in China:

JD.com, China’s largest online direct sales company, sells a similar product to the Echo and Home devices: the DingDong Smart Speaker. The DingDong Smart Speaker uses the JD+ super app (called “Jingdong Weilian”) to allow full voice control of all products in the JD+ ecosystem.

Baidu, the Chinese telcom giant, is selling Duer, a conversational virtual assistant service. The assistant service provides quick and easy access to Baidu’s various Internet services and engages in a dialogue with users rather than simply being voice-controlled.

Fabriq, a French startup, is a speaker device that sells for $50 and uses Amazon’s own Alexa functionality. With almost all of Alexa’s smarts — everything from music and news to third-party skills, smart home control, and jokes — Fabriq offers plenty of tech appeal in an attractive little package.

“C|Net said: “Fabriq proved to be a capable Alexa gadget. It did a nice job understanding my voice commands, and though it sometimes needed to think a second or two longer than the Echo before pulling up a song I had requested, I came away satisfied with the user-friendly smarts. At just $50, it shows a lot of promise.”

The mobile social companions: Pepper and Jibo

Two notable social robotic ventures are having a different experience than Amazon and Google:

1.   Although SoftBank has sold slightly more than 7,000 Pepper robots to consumers and businesses in Japan and France and still plans to launch in Taiwan, China and the U.S. very soon, their emotion engine – Pepper’s main selling point – will be turned off.

“I’m not sure that being able to read emotions can add to service,” said Morten Paulsen, who covers industrial automation giant Fanuc Corp. as head of Japan research at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets. “There are several Peppers in my office building, but I don’t see anyone gathering around them anymore. They are basically animated iPads.”

Many people have reported seeing Peppers idle and in corners instead of out front greeting and interacting with people.

2.    Jibo, the much-publicized first product from social robotics pioneer and MIT professor Cynthia Braezeal, has had a series of setbacks and delays including having to refund all non-English-speaking Jibo orders and most recently having to split their initial deliveries into Beta or hold-til-later groups (I’m in the latter). Beta’s are being delivered now so we’ll soon hear from the community how well it performs and meets expectations.

Many other mobile robots have been announced but haven’t come to market just yet. Asus’ Zenbo, at $599, is quite interesting; Buddy from Blue Frog Robotics seems to have run out of money after it got panned in an MIT Technology article; and Future Robots FURo is selling in small numbers as mobile information kiosks.

Bottom line

Can it be that consumers don’t care as much about the mobility aspect as they do about price and conversational interaction? Or is it mismanagement problem, as Bloomberg reporters Pavel Alpeyev and Takashi Amano suggest in their BloombergTechnology report on Pepper and SoftBank?

Source: Jibo/YouTube

Bringing a complex new product to market is an intensive process fraught with problems. Getting hardware ready for manufacturing is often the easy part; it’s the software and regulatory compliance that’s often the most challenging. Here are three examples: Ford Motor Co., Velodyne LiDAR and Jibo.

Ford Motor Co.

Ford announced plans to begin delivering fully driverless vehicles – cars without a steering wheel or pedals – in the next five years. It plans to initially target ride-sharing fleets and package delivery services with deliveries to individuals later in the decade. Since human drivers are the most costly piece in the metrics of commercial fleet operations, autonomous driving is the next big push to reduce costs and improve productivity and safety.

According to a Wall Street Journal article, Ford said that it was “keenly focused on fully driverless cars with concern over semiautonomous features [such as adaptive cruise control, emergency braking, and steering assistance] and whether drivers can take over quickly enough when driverless systems are disabled. We’re not going to play in this middle-of-the-road approach,” said Raj Nair, Ford’s product chief.

Ford has decided to not take the incremental approach that many other car companies are taking partly because the regulatory and insurance aspects of autonomous driving haven’t been worked out yet, nor has the artificial intelligence of the control software.

Photo: Velodyne LiDAR HDL-32E

Velodyne LiDAR

Ford also announced a $75 million investment in Velodyne, a Silicon Valley LiDAR maker. Ford’s investment in Velodyne is aimed at helping both Ford and Velodyne successfully recognize objects and navigate traffic. The funds will also be used to help Velodyne lower the cost of their LiDAR to between $300 and $500, the price point at which mass adoption becomes practical.

Baidu, a large Chinese web services and search provider, also participated in the $150 million investment in Velodyne.

Velodyne’s LiDAR sensors provide a full 360 degree 3D environmental view and are used in autonomous vehicles, industrial equipment/machinery, and for 3D mapping and surveillance. As can be seen in the chart provided by Frost & Sullivan, LiDARs will play a big role in all phases of the emergence of self-driving vehicles.

Source: Frost & Sullivan;VDS Automotive SYS Konferenz 2014/

Velodyne’s problem is to get their LiDARs down in cost so that the company can be a major provider of LiDAR sensors for all new vehicles.

Source: Jibo The World’s First Social Robot for the Home/YouTube

Jibo

In a setback to global customers that pre-ordered Jibo’s, Jibo announced that they cannot deliver and will refund those orders, leaving only US and Canada orders unchanged. Jibo had previously announced a general delivery delay of nine months earlier this year.

In the email update to its international backers Jibo writes: “After exploring all the options, we have come to the conclusion that we will not be able to deliver Jibo to your country”, adding this is because the bot “won’t function up to our standards in your country.”

International orders add layer upon layer of localization issues: electrical certifications, language, speech recognition, cultural nuances, etc. Jibo’s solution to these mounting problems was to cancel all international orders and endure the disappointment of customers in the 45 countries involved.

Jibo, a cute social robot that premiered in a very successful IndieGoGo campaign in mid-2014, is now only going to ship to backers in the U.S. and Canada, with deliveries beginning in late October. From social media reports, it seems that there is still a lot of tumult about the software side of Jibo, the SDK, and the app site amongst insiders at Jibo as well as app developers. The consensus is that the initial round of Jibo’s to begin delivery in late October will be very limited in what they can do or what services they can offer.

What would your ideal robot be like? One that can change nappies and tell bedtime stories to your child? Perhaps you’d prefer a butler that can polish silver and mix the perfect cocktail? Or maybe you’d prefer a companion that just happened to be a robot? Certainly, some see robots as a hypothetical future replacement for human carers. But a question roboticists are asking is: how human should these future robot companions be?

A companion robot is one that is capable of providing useful assistance in a socially acceptable manner. This means that a robot companion’s first goal is to assist humans. Robot companions are mainly developed to help people with special needs such as older people, autistic children or the disabled. They usually aim to help in a specific environment: a house, a care home or a hospital.

At the beginning of the 20th century, one of the first pieces of technology designed to help in a household environment was the vacuum cleaner. Since then, technology has transformed the home. Nowadays, we even have a robot that can cook. The chef robot was developed by Moley Robotics, a start-up company that won the 2015 Asia Consumer Electronics Show. The robot is said to be able to cook 2,000 different meals.

Pepper, the latest robot from Aldebaran Robotics, is a good example of a humanoid robot companion. It can provide assistance in making choices, detect human facial expressions and communicate with people. Pepper can adapt its behaviour depending on its perception of a person’s mood, and in this sense we can say that Pepper cares for people. At the moment, only research institutes and Japanese residents can acquire a Pepper robot. The robot costs around £8,710 for a Japanese customer.

Companion robots can take the form of pets, too. Paro is a robotic seal developed to provide comfort to old people. And rather than taking care of you, this robot has to be taken care of. It is how Paro provides emotional support.

Sometimes people get attached to robots that are not actually made for companionship. Take Roomba, for example, the intelligent vacuum cleaner. In their studies, Ja-Young Sung and colleagues from the Georgia Institute of Technology found that people wanted to become tidier in order to allow the vacuum cleaner to run smoothly.

Although many of these robots show some form of initiative and encourage people to interact with them, many are responsive rather than active – in other words, the robot waits for a human request before acting.

Should robots be more ‘human’?

Thanks to progress in Artificial Intelligence and technology, we can now develop more intelligent systems that are capable of acting very much like a human. Last year, a few of them were presented to the public, such as Nadine, the robot receptionist, Yangyang, the singer robot, and Aiko Chihira, the robot that can communicate in sign language.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DydjzhZDdlg

Although the popular and controversial Turing test is used in AI to measure whether a machine is as intelligent as a human, it is a very different thing when it comes to robots, since robots are also expected to act intelligently. There is not yet a standardised test to determinate how human a robot is. It may come in the near future. However, all robotic researchers seem to agree that the robot would have to be able to show some social awareness and personality, and be capable of understanding and recognising people’s speech and expressions.

But do we want robots to have more personality and to be able to take more initiative? Ultimately, to act more like us? Some may argue, yes. If intelligent vacuum cleaners were able to differentiate a sleeping human from objects, for example, at least one unfortunate lady in South Korea wouldn’t have had her hair “eaten” by her new domestic appliance.

But others argue that it is dangerous to give robots too much intelligence. And would it allow them to answer back? We are still at the beginning of research regarding the potential consequences this might have. Indeed, the scientific community is still debating whether a robot can ever have feelings or be self-conscious. Although AI has been able to perform certain tasks extremely skillfully, for example Alpha Go, the community is still a long way from developing an AI which closely resembles the human mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N1Q8oFpX1Y

At present, robot companions are either focused on companionship or on task-execution. Jibo, for example, is a social robot that can talk, order food, remind you of things, or take pictures, while Roomba is an intelligent, but ultimately functional, vacuum cleaner.

Who is in charge?

But it’s about striking the right balance, depending on the job at hand and the person it is working for. Our most recent study, Who is in charge? Sense of control and Robot anxiety in Human Robot Interaction, showed that the more controlling and anxious about robots a person is, the more initiative they expect the robot to show and the more willing they are to delegate tasks to it. The research focused specifically on what level of initiative people preferred their robot companion to have when executing a cleaning task.

Participants could choose between manually turning on the cleaning robot themselves, having their robot companion turn on the cleaning robot remotely when instructed, or having the robot companion turn on the cleaning robot when it noticed that cleaning needed to be done. It was found that most people wanted their robot companion to execute the task without being asked.

This paradoxical result may be explained by the fact that people are now more used to technology – from computers and smartphones to smartwatches and intelligent home appliances – acting semi-autonomously. Smart companion robots are just the next step in the long evolution of our relationship with technology.

In the future, it is likely that we will see more domestic robot companions that can be customised to people’s individual preferences. And we will be able to shop for them as we now shop for vacuum cleaners and phones. Ultimately, it seems, there will be a robot for everyone.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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• Japanese telcos vie for share in consumer robot-as-a-service business
• Robot caregivers: How much interaction with a robot is socially acceptable?
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See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Jibo got $16 million from Asian VCs to enable Jibo to speak and sell in Japan and China, while Blue River Technology got $17 million from a group of agricultural VCs to expand product development to new areas, as funding for robotic ventures continues to soar. UPDATED To include funding for Soft Robotics, Inc. Flyability, and Naïo Technologies.

Jibo, the Cambridge-based maker of a family robot that expects to deliver 7,500 pre-ordered units and then launch a marketing campaign in March/April of 2016, got $16 million in funding from two Asian VC firms. The funding is to localize apps and gestures and enable Jibo to speak Japanese and Chinese so that it can be sold to those markets.

“We’ve received significant interest from Asia. I just got back from Japan and there’s a different kind of interest in that market for robots. In the US, it’s more about what can this robot do for me. But in Japan, there’s almost a folk lore to robots,” said Jibo CEO Steve Chambers.

Aaron Tilley on the Forbes staff wrote: “Jibo has a robot head that swivels on a static base in a cartoon-like manner. Users can talk to Jibo, and it will talk back. Jibo can also take pictures or play games. The robot’s camera recognizes users and remembers their preferences. The company is integrating Jibo with a bunch of third-party services to open up what the robot can do. A Skype integration, for instance, would allow the user to take calls on the robot and then have the robot’s camera follow them as they move around. Some companies are interested in integrating Jibo with other smart home devices. The company is also now working on these third-party integrations with Internet services in China and Japan.

Blue River Technology, a Silicon Valley startup, has perfected its lettuce-thinning technology and is now providing that service to 10% of the growers in the industry. This new round of funding is to expand their technologies to be able to sense each individual plant, determine its health and needs and then precisely apply the correct amount of care, plant by plant, at tractor speed, the very definition of precision agriculture.

Blue River uses computer vision and robotics for various agricultural tasks. It was founded in 2011 by two Stanford University alumni, and has made breakthrough algorithms and robotic solutions for identifying weeds and selectively killing unwanted plants. Its solution is particularly suited to organic agriculture and for fields with chemical-resistant weeds.

Osaro, a San Francisco startup, received $3.3 million in seed funding to accelerate the development of AI for robots to speed up the training and programming process.

Soft Robotics Inc., a Boston startup, received $3 million in Series A funding from Material Impact Fund, Taylor Farms Ventures and Haiyin Capital. The funds will be used to enable rapid growth and widespread deployment of their unique gripper system for advanced manufacturing and food handling and the ag industry not only in the U.S. but in China as well.

Naïo Technologies, a French startup with its first sales in 2015, raised $3.3 million from the Emertec and CapAgro investment funds, a WiSeed crowdfunding campaign and via its previous shareholders. The newly obtained funds will allow the company to finance international expansion, R&D activities and to double sales in 2016.

Kurion, a California integrator of service robots for high-risk applications, acquired Oxford Technologies, a 60-employee UK and EU provider of robotic services for nuclear facilities and clean rooms, for an undisclosed amount.

Flyability, a Swiss drone startup, raised $2.53 million. “This round brings Flyability the resources needed to launch its first product to market, which will be available in 2016”, said Patrick Thévoz, co-founder and CEO of the company. The company has already shipped prototypes to its first customers focusing on industrial inspection in the energy and transport infrastructure industries, and first responders such as firefighters, police forces, and search & rescue professionals.

BOTTOM LINE: Money continues to flow to robotic ventures well into the holiday season. Over $1.2 billion has been invested in more than 50 robotic startup companies, and an amount well above that figure has been involved in 29 acquisitions. All this in one year.

These new robots — and the proliferation of mobile robot butlers, guides and kiosks — promise to recognize your voice and face, and help you plan your calendar, provide reminders, take pictures of special moments, text, call and videoconference, order fast food, keep watch on your house or office, read recipes, play games, read emotions and interact accordingly. The list goes on.

These products are attempting to be analogous to a sharp administrative assistant who knows your schedule, contacts and interests, and engages with you about them to help you stay informed, connected and active.

According to a research study by Tractica, annual shipments of consumer robots (a category that includes robotic vacuums, lawn mowers and pool cleaners as well as social robots) will increase from 6.6 million units in 2015 to 31.2 million units worldwide by 2020, with a cumulative total of nearly 100 million consumer robots shipped during that period.

Although robot vacuums will remain the largest segment of the market over the next several years, the fastest growth will occur in robotic personal assistants — a category that is nascent today. According to the report, “the next 5 years will set the stage for how these robots could fundamentally transform our homes and daily lives.”

As social and companion products come to market, they incorporate artificial intelligence from the past several years. Yet almost every day there are breakthroughs in learning systems that will soon be commercialized and incorporated into future personal devices. These AI improvements will enable ubiquitous robotic and robot-like personal assistants and companions. Consequently, today’s social robots are transition devices for early adopters  to scrutinize, play with, suggest improvements to, and talk about — which is why 2016 is a pivotal year. It’s the time when companies will sell enough units to learn whether their bots provide a real and lasting service, or if they are just a passing fancy.

These new products fall into three categories, and the primary ones (as determined by launch date and invested capital) are shown below:

Mobile devices

• For homes
  • Pepper, by SoftBank Robotics. A mobile humanoid robot that sells for $1,600 plus an additional $200 per month for Internet service, updates and maintenance. Only speaks Japanese and French at present but Chinese and English are planned for early 2016. Peppers are selling at a steady rate of 1,000 per month.
  • Buddy, from Paris-based Blue Frog Robotics. A squat little $649 device that whisks around on wheels and casters and will do many of the things Jibo will do. Buddy will begin shipping and selling in 2016.
• ​For offices, stores, hotels, public spaces and museums
  • SaviOne/Relay by SaviOak. A hospitality robot that autonomously navigates hotel hallways and elevators to deliver items to hotel guests.
  • Store assistants and guides – multiple vendors are beginning to provide mobile kiosks that can identify items and navigate to where they are stored.
  • Public guides and assistants answering common questions – for airports, museums, galleries, public spaces, and soon, restaurants, by multiple international vendors.
  • Special-purpose mobile bots such as
    • Budgee, a tote-carrying follow-me device that communicates through your phone, by Five Elements Robotics.
    • CaddyTrek, a follow-me golf-bag carrying mobility device from FTR Systems.

Tabletop assistants

• Jibo, the spin-out from the MIT Media Lab headed by Cynthia Breazeal. Twists and tilts and communicates like or better than Siri, initially only in English. Jibo will sell for $749, and connects to your home WiFi network. This recipient of more than $60 million in crowdfunds and equity investments, with $16 million in new funding that will be used to localize Jibo with language and apps for the Chinese and Japanese markets.
• Sota, by Japan’s largest telecom company, NTT, will sell for about $800, plus a monthly service of around $30. In addition to its ability to verbally communicate with the user, the robot can also assist the user with health functions by interacting with wearable devices to check blood pressure and heart rate.

Non-robotic home assistance devices

• ECHO by Amazon is a stationary voice-activated hands-free device that provides information, answers questions, plays music, reads the news, checks sports scores or the weather, and more.
• Rokid, by Chinese home automation company Rokid, will soon be introducing a stationary device with intelligent robot capabilities like omni-directional voice recognition using eight microphones, face recognition, and an ability to integrate into smart home automation systems.
• MJI (More Joyful Innovation), a cute egg-shaped communication device with a 5″ screen, is being geared towards the elderly and those that required communication assistance. MJI can send and receive messages and phone calls without requiring any manual input using voice activation. MJI will begin production and sales early in 2016.

In addition to the products mentioned, there are many, many other cute bots designed for children, STEM education, schools, therapists, disability centers, and academia. They are all worthwhile products, but unlike those listed above, they are not being built for mass consumer adoption.

Bottom line

At this year’s iREX Robot Expo in Tokyo and at the Beijing World Robotics Conference (both held last month) social, humanoid and mobile robots were the biggest crowd pleasers. Ten years ago PopSci reporter Tim Hornyak wrote “Loving the Machine” — a book about Asia’s long-time fascination with robots. His insights still appear to be true: the Japanese really do have an unusual affinity for human-like robotic things. This is why so much money is flowing to help these new social robots quickly adapt to the Chinese and Japanese language markets, and to provide localized apps from their software stores.

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https://youtu.be/xKFaYuBF9HU

Jibo may be a robot, but the last thing the team wants is for Jibo to sound like a robot. In these two video interviews, Jibo’s design team talks about how they selected Jibo’s voice, how that then manifests itself as the voice you’ll hear when you interact with Jibo, as well as the engineering challenges of Text-To-Speech (TTS) technology and how the team solved for them.

Blade Kotelly, VP of Design 

https://youtu.be/3xYlzFdLrAs

Sriddhar Raghavan and Roberto Pieraccini

https://youtu.be/OddZWgc0na8

This week saw fresh funding of $11.2m for Virtual Incision, a startup developing robotically assisted surgical devices, and another $11m for Jibo, the company founded by MIT Media Lab’s Cynthia Breazeal of Human Robot Interaction fame. Money continues to flow into robotics.

Jibo Inc., the company behind the social robot Jibo which last year successfully raised $3.7m in Indiegogo crowdfunding, is now focusing its partnering strategically and concentrating on the Asian market. The lineup of investors in this $11m add-on to the previous $25.3m Series A round includes:

• Acer, a Taiwanese hardware and software manufacturer
• Dentsu Ventures, a Japanese VC with a focus on marketing, media, social media and design
• KDDI, an Asian telecom carrier (read on to see how other Asian telecom companies, namely NTT and SoftBank, are also investing in social robots)
• LG, a Korean telecom operator and manufacturer
• NetPosa, a Chinese online services provider

Together with the $11m, Jibo has now raised a total of $38.6m and has announced a production schedule, beginning in late Fall 2015 and through the Spring of 2016, for crowdfunded orders and preorders. Additional orders are waitlisted.

It’s easy to see that this round of funding focuses on serious expansion into the Asian market – the same area where SoftBank and partners Alibaba and Foxconn are bringing their Pepper robot to market and NTT and Vstone are readying their Sota companion tabletop robot to compete. All the telecom giants want to participate in this new trend towards home, social robots and devices, to get a monthly slice of the Internet service pie. SoftBank is charging $100 per month for Pepper’s connection services.

Virtual Incision hands. Source: Virtual Incision

Virtual Incision Corp. (VIC), developer of an in vivo mini-robot surgical device, enabling minimally invasive colon and abdominal procedures, received $11.2m in investment, bringing total funding, to date, to $25.7m. VIC’s robotically-assisted surgical device is of an investigational nature and not commercially available.

In their press release, VIC said the funds will be used for a feasibility study on the use of the company’s miniaturized robotically assisted surgical technology for colon resection, a procedure performed to treat patients with lower gastrointestinal diseases such as diverticulitis, Crohn’s disease, inflammatory bowel disease and colon cancer.

Through the Jibo SDK, developers have high-level access to Jibo’s audio processing, visual processing, persona and interaction, and movement capabilities. The SDK gives developers the tools to build a wide range of Jibo Skills for personal enjoyment or as a business opportunity. We sincerely believe developers have a huge role to play in extending Jibo’s personality and capabilities, making him the social robot people are looking forward to being part of their lives.

To realize this, Jibo’s SDK development team has been working on creating an SDK that makes developing on Jibo accessible to a wide range of developers. Our skills development team has been using the alpha version internally for a number of months now. In this video, Jonathan Ross and Francois Laberge talk about the challenges of building Jibo’s SDK and some of the innovative approaches they’ve used including the use of Electron and the Atom Editor from Github.

https://youtu.be/94n6A_1GSaE

https://youtu.be/_f8VjQLO8Xw

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

Imagine an assistant that knows your schedule, contacts, interests and location, and that can communicate with you to help you stay informed, connected and on top of your game. This is more personalized than your PC, tablet or smartphone and, depending on whether physical or virtual, is in a pleasing, personal and compatible form. If these assistants catch on, they will begin anticipating and handling many of the little decisions that fill our days. The potential for this form of artificial intelligence has tech companies vying to lead the pack.

Apple’s Siri, Google’s Google Now, Microsoft’s Cortana, Facebook, and Baidu are all in various states of pursuing virtual assistants. But JIBO, Pepper, Cubic, EmoSpark and others are just now coming to market and are offering a physical component – a robotic presence – which they hope will enhance the experience.

2015 is the year physical products will be coming to market and available for experimentation and testing. Pepper ships in the summer in Japan, JIBO ships preorders in Q3 as does Cubic in the fall and EmoSpark in the summer.

These types of personal assistants rely on multiple activities including: speech recognition to determine and parse through spoken commands; predictive technology to anticipate what a user will likely do next; and determining and using contextual data (biographic data and situational information, e.g.: location, time and date). Apple, Google and Baidu – all of which attempt to provide this service – want their intelligent interface to fit all front ends, to be the universal contact point. They see a plentiful revenue stream if they are successful. Others want Apple and Google to redirect users to company sites with apps that understand their own content better, e.g.: directing requests for pizza to Dom, the digital front-end for taking Dominos Pizza orders.

Many are waiting to see how the competition plays out. Car companies and other smart product providers, fearing a variety of consequences outside of their control, aren’t enamored of letting Apple or Google (or any of the others) run their voice-powered front-end systems … thus their current intense race for in-house and startup development. But if Google or Apple or ??? gets to market first with a true digital assistant that people embrace and buy – one that can be virtual or physical – car companies may need to make their systems adapt to that system because it’s what everyone wants to use.

The key to the outcome of this race is whether a general purpose AI will be able to steer people through their digital world, or whether users would rather navigate to applications that are specialists (such as American Airlines or Dominos Pizza).

Natural language recognition – and the ability to analyze user desires from that language – is a very competitive science these days. Nuance, the biggest provider of voice and language solutions to the auto industry and a collaborator with IBM up until recently, is now competing with IBM’s Watson team and also Apple, which is rumored to be working on their own language processing system instead of using Nuance. A look at the What’s Next section of Nuance’s website is, to quote them, “The intersection of Science Fiction, super-pi, and technology innovation.” But a more descriptive quote from that page seems more appropriate: “Intelligent self-service delivers a better customer experience.” That’s what this race is all about.

• The second wave of social robots is here
• Amazon’s Echo: A point-of-sale even the kids can relate to
• The next era of conversational technology
• The death of search (or, My dysfunctional relationship with Siri)

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

Our goal is to give the Jibo developer community the tools and support they need to make expressive content that takes advantage of all of these output modalities.

To help our developers create compelling skills, we’ve given Jibo a sophisticated animated system that builds on more than a decade of research from Jibo’s founder, Dr. Cynthia Breazeal’s personal robotics group at the MIT Media Lab.

Catch a sneak peek of Jibo’s development and watch our newest video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx-WYHSzEGY

http://youtu.be/OhtmjlePduY

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• Jibo raises $1M in first week of crowdfunding campaign
• JIBO: A game changing social robot
• The second wave of social robots is here
• Designing Jibo: Subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful

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

Rethink Robotics, Xenix, Rapyuta, Perceptron, Skydio, Sarcos and JIBO have all announced substantial fundings for a wide range of robotic ventures. Plus there are some new funders joining the fray.

Andreessen Horowitz lead a $3M financing of Skydio, a Silicon Valley startup developing collision avoidance AI systems for drones.

Texas-based XENIX, the germ zapping mobile robot that received a lot of publicity amidst the Ebola news, got $25 million to scale up manufacturing to meet sales demand. A recent Forbes story suggested many additional uses for the disinfection system once it fulfills its hospital orders.

Rapyuta Robotics, a Tokyo startup, raised $3 million to build cloud-connected low-cost multi-robotic systems for indoor and outdoor security applications.

Perceptron, a Michigan vision systems integrator, acquired two small European companies for $15.9 million:

• Coord3, an Italy-based coordinate measuring machine (CMM) designer and manufacturer
• And Next Metrology, a Czech Republic CMM software developer

JIBO, the Cambridge-based IndieGoGo social robot phenom that got 4,800 pre-orders and $2.3 million in crowd funding, received a $26.6 Series A equity boost to help them scale up to produce those 4,800, and hopefully many thousand more, JIBOs. Some of the money will be used to provide developers with SDK kits to help jump start JIBO with hundreds of independent apps.

Perhaps the biggest transaction of the month – but the information is presently not available – is the buyback of Sarcos from Raytheon. Salt Lake City-based Sarcos is the company made famous for their development of the colorful XOS-2 military exoskeleton and was then acquired by Raytheon in 2007. In addition to government contracts, Sarcos has also been involved in entertainment robotics such as the Bellagio fountains in Las Vegas and the Jurrassic Park ride in Orlando, Florida.

Boston-based Rethink Robotics, of two-armed Baxter robot fame, got a just-in-time Christmas gift (announced in January) of a $26.6 million Series D equity round to sustain the company until it becomes funded through revenues.

Horizon 2020, the commission used to stimulated robotics-related development in the EU, announced their co-funding of 17 robotics-related projects totalling $87 million. Click here to review details of those 17 investments.

Finally, the small group of venture capital companies focusing on robotics and AI, Robolution, Grishin, Andreesen Horowitz, Lux Capital, Drone.VC, Bosch, Bezos, Google and Lemnos Labs, will be joined by two new ones:

• iRobot has sent up what is expected to be a $25 million fund and has already made its first investment into Paracosm, a Gainsville, FL 3D mapping software and systems developer.
• The Strategic Robotics Fund, in Charlottesville, VA, will come online sometime in the 2nd quarter.

The idea of robots being a part of our daily lives is a controversial topic to say the least. It seems everyone you talk to has a strong opinion about the issue as well as an equally vivid image in their head of what a robot looks like. Cliché robot visuals are everywhere in our culture and much of it heavy-handed and unflattering. Popular images conjure a complicated machine with poorly simulated human-like parts mixed with exposed joints, sensors and lights.

Robots have looked the way they do for a good reason. Most of these machines are a collection of motors/sensors/chips/joints that strive to mimic the movements/appearance of lifelike beings. The overtly mechanical look is driven by physical necessity, allowing these machines to do real work in a very task-oriented manner.

A social robot is a very different machine however. The vision that Cynthia and the Jibo team laid out to us almost a year ago painted the picture of a socially connected, intelligent home companion. Its primary skill would be its ability to emotional connect with its user and become a helpful extension of the family. Jibo would have no need to zip around the house on 2 wheels or reach over and pour you a glass of water. Instead, its movements, expressions and communication all needed to be focused directly on the user in a subtle and pleasing way. This robot’s primary mechanical task was to make you smile J.

Every design project has unique challenges and this one was certainly no exception. How do we erase the visual constructs of what a robot is supposed to look like and focus this new experience? What qualities will make this little machine deliver on the promise in sophisticated, visually bold way? John Maeda, renowned graphic designer and author of The Laws of Simplicity, famously said that the key to creating harmony between object and user arises when you “subtract the obvious and add the meaningful”. This quote summarizes our fundamental design approach with Jibo from early concepts to final product.

Subtract the obvious:

Given the primary task of connecting emotionally and re-defining social intelligence, decisions over eliminating or hiding traditional robot visual elements proved crucial to defining the look of Jibo. Some of these decisions were easy. The Jibo team envisioned a desktop companion freed from the need to complete mechanical tasks, so there was no need for arms and legs. Looking deeper at the elements of a robot, the remaining decisions of what could be eliminated were much smaller, subtle but equally important.

Jibo needed a head, but what level of detail was necessary to convey and connect with users? Working closely with the Jibo team we explored a range of head proportions and played with the level of detail needed. We all agreed we didn’t want to create anything that resembled a toy so any character-driven detail needed to be treated with abstract simplicity. Eliminating as much unnecessary detail in the face and head without taking away the visual ‘character’ necessary to connect with users was a crucial and delicate balance. Through this elimination process, we discovered that actually very little overt facial detailing is needed.

The simplification exercise then moved from the aesthetic features we could safely subtract to the more complicated issue of functional elements we wanted to hide. We certainly didn’t want a complicated mess of sensors, visible cameras and body segments to detract from the bold simplicity of Jibo. This was a heavily collaboration working closely with the extended Jibo team of software, electrical and mechanical engineers. For this effort our previous design experience working on laptops, tiny wearables and countless high tech gadgets was key to understanding where the opportunities to reduce complexity laid.

Add the meaningful:

Understanding the core elements that will make the physical Jibo resonate in a ‘socially connected’ way was equally important to the simplification of form and details. The Jibo team had established a few basic elements that would be key to this emotional connection in the hardware: a friendly silhouette activated by an expressive movement that is directly linked to an intelligent UI ‘face’ and likeable voice.

The design exploration of form and movement were closely linked and needed to be explored together to define the silhouette. Fardad Faridi, Jibo’s talented in-house animator, introduced us to the basics of character expression in animation and shared examples of basic forms that can deliver the necessary ‘line of action’ of thoughtful poses. These movements are crucial to reinforcing the emotions and interaction conveyed through Jibo’s face and voice.

A variety of form + movement architectures were explored but the design that emerged was based on earlier work from the Jibo team in Boston. The architecture sub-divided a very simple cylindrical vertical body into a series of angled/rotating sections. By controlling the movement of each section independently Jibo was able to quickly snap into a variety of expressive poses and appear to magically dance in a pleasing way. The most impressive aspect of this architecture was its inherent simplicity. The traditional pivoting joints seen on most other robotic mechanisms would have been overkill and far more visually complicated. More importantly, the cylindrical nature of the mechanism meant that the eventual form could take on a very elemental geometric quality: an abstracted character composed of a simple cylindrical torso and pure spherical head.

The design of Jibo’s face was probably the most difficult part to get right. Since the user experience would rely heavily on software driven apps and programs we all agreed his face would have to have a display somewhere on it. As discussed above, the subtraction of elements played an important role here but eliminating the display was not an option.  The screen UI (working in concert with the voice and movement) would be integral in creating the facial character of Jibo while also providing necessary supporting visual communication. Luckily, the desire for impactful graphics (that can be easily seen from across the room) aligned with the desire of a large-headed, friendly character silhouette. It was crucial that users not focus on the technology inside Jibo. Hiding the display component behind the face was a seemingly small detail that has a huge psychological impact on how users react to their little companion.

Completing the vision:

In the end, the details make the design. Eliminating as many unnecessary details as possible and celebrating those few remaining with a subtle sophistication was key to the refinement of the physical Jibo. The boldly simple form silhouette made up of pure geometric shapes is accented with subtle precision engineering details and sophisticated surface transitions to express the qualities of a truly premium and intelligent device. Playful elements (such as the friendly proportions, expressive movement, high-touch surfaces of the body and the borderless face) work together to build the approachable human-like quality that other smart devices lack. The combination of these contrasted elements creates a bit of mystery around the intelligence hidden inside and creates an own-able visual icon for the first social robot. We are excited to be able to introduce Jibo to the public.

On July 15th, Jibo launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo with the goal of raising $100,000 towards developing their new social robot for the home. Less than one week later, Jibo surpassed the $1M mark, with hundreds of pre-orders made for both the home and developers editions.

The brainchild of Cynthia Breazeal, Director of MIT’s Personal Robots Group, Jibo builds on her earlier work in personal robotics (remember Kismet and Leonardo?), and is designed to be an intelligent assistant and companion for the home. The first developers version – sold out at 250 units – is scheduled to release in Q3 of 2015, while the first home version – sold out at 500 units – is scheduled to release in Q4. Preorders are still being taken for 2016 ship dates for both editions.

“We at Jibo, Inc. are absolutely thrilled by the enthusiastic level of consumer and developer support for Jibo. The public is ready to bring social robots into the home! We also see Jibo as being highly relevant for supporting university research in human-robot interaction through our developer program. Our crowd funding campaign is helping us to build a focused community who we can work with to help make Jibo a groundbreaking product when released in 2015. I would be thrilled to see a strong robotics developer community join us in our journey to bring Jibo to the world.” said Breazeal in an email exchange today.

While headlines about Jibo setting new crowdfunding records should probably be taken with a grain of salt (compare Jibo to the top ten business crowdfunding campaigns of all time), no one in the robotics community can deny the excitement of watching Jibo’s early success, in particular with the developer community. According to a report by Crowdfund Insider: it took only four hours for the campaign to be fully funded, 33% of pre-orders have been for developer editions, and after only four days, Jibo achieved a Top 10 ranking among Indiegogo’s Most Funded Tech Projects of All Time. “They were indeed one of the fastest campaigns to reach $1 million on Indiegogo,” said Kate Drane, who leads Indiegogo’s Design, Technology and Hardware section.

“Robotics is really coming of age as a consumer product,” says Andra Keay, startup expert and Director of Silicon Valley Robotics. “People say hardware is hard, but it’s also popular. Nine out of the ten all time top crowdfunded business campaigns have been for hardware and it looks like Jibo is on track to become one of them. It’s fantastic to see a robotics startup getting such great visibility because the secret for ongoing success here is not just attracting users but also attracting developers to build new value for the platform … Jibo is an excellent example of how to successfully tell your startup story and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next.”

Frank Tobe from The Robot Report agrees: “Jibo is part hype and part hope. But the team is wonderful and spans all the relevant areas needed to fulfill all that was promised. Many companies in this space – particularly the ones that started a couple of years ago – are floundering, struggling with technical problems and lack of money caused by delays. The hope is that Cynthia brings newer technology, the best and brightest team, AND that she has the funding covered. Certainly the IndieGoGo campaign shows consumer interest and adds a lot of extra money to the stash. Still, it will be almost a year and a half before we see JIBO so lets not overhype it now so that anything next year will be anticlimactic.”

With so many preorders to fulfill, robotics tech watchers have been left wondering whether Jibo will be able to live up to its promise, especially given the ups and downs of other campaigns that have started off with a big bang but then failed to ship. However, Scott Miller, CEO of Dragon Innovation – another crowdfunding platform that specializes in hardware – says that preorders have their upside too: “Higher volumes do make things easier when it comes to manufacturing as well as follow-on investment.” Miller adds that often the real goal with crowdfunding campaigns, especially with a team as experienced as the one Breazeal has brought together, “is to discover product/market fit”. Breazeal’s focus on building the developer community seems a wise approach to bringing this vision to technical reality.

See. Hear. Learn. Help. Speak. Relate. These are the ways Jibo-the-robot promises to engage with us. All the more reason for Jibo-Inc-the-company to apply the same standards of engagement to their early backers as they move forward, and to hold to their standard that proactive dialogue is key, even when – especially when – there’s a problem. And aren’t there always a few hiccups along the way?

JIBO, a 2013 Boston startup, launched an IndieGoGo campaign last week and is off to a rousing start, lots of favorable press, and, as of the time of this writing, has raised more than $700,000 over their $100,000 goal.

JIBO is a home device with a small screen that conveys emotions but is also used for social services, story-telling and other functions. It isn’t an appliance, nor will it be available until December, 2015. Apps from the JIBO store will be available in early 2016. But it is a momentous step toward a robotic family member that knows your wants and needs.

JIBO sees with two hi-res cameras. It can recognize and track faces, take pictures and enable video calling. It has a see-and-track feature to turn and look at people and to support video calling. It uses AI algorithms to learn your preferences. It can hear, process and speak using natural language and has multiple microphones to let you talk from anywhere in the room. It proactively helps make everyday tasks simpler.

Using natural social and emotive cues, as well as a connection to the home wifi network, it relates to each member of the household, delivering messages and reminders.

JIBO was developed by MIT social roboticist Cynthia Braezeal (now on leave from her teaching gig) and her JIBO team, which includes speech recognition, nonverbal communication and machine learning experts. “It’s really important for technology to be humanized,” said Breazeal in a NY Times story about JIBO. “The next stage in computing, the next wave, is emotion.”

“What if technology treated you like a human being? What if technology helped you feel closer to the ones you love? What if technology helped you like a partner instead of simply being a tool? That’s what Jibo is about,” said CEO and co-founder Braezeal in a JIBO promotional video.

The device is 11” tall and has 3 full-revolute axes, which means that there are three components allowing the screen/head to swivel in any direction. Its oval display is also a touchscreen. It uses a high-end ARM processor and a Linux platform. The combination of swivelling and clever software graphics appears to master the jump from device to social friend. An SDK and developer units will be available months before the consumer December, 2015 ship date. Because JIBO is an open platform, its skills and applications will grow in unimaginable ways and should be fun to watch. Software app developers are paying attention: 1/3 or the IndieGoGo pre-orders thus far are developer units. 

Competitors in the social robot space include the $260 EmoSPARK (a box console with no screen or moving parts that ships later this year), the $575 Russian Cubic console (which is producing a beta run of 100 units later this year), and the mobile ADAM from Milan-based Hands Company (which showed ADAM at CES in Las Vegas earlier this year and plan to begin offering them for sale in Q4, 2015).

I showed the IndieGoGo video of JIBO to two psychologists and my wife (who said that any device that can order Chinese food is a winner and wanted to buy one right away). Both psychologists said that JIBO really seems to have built a device that is socially attuned and likely to be a trustworthy and functional family member. Their comments, combined with the successful IndieGoGo campaign, suggests that JIBO may be a game changer in the new social robot marketplace.

Cynthia Breazeal’s Jibo launched today and coming on the heels of Pepper, Aldebaran and Softbank’s new social robot, and Jimmy from Intel. It seems like we’re seeing a second wave of social robots. Jibo is less of a humanoid than the others though and more of a human mirror, being able to be a telepresence device or a social robot. Jibo will be an open platform and is currently taking preorders via Indiegogo, with an expected shipping date of Sept 2015 for the developer edition.

Jibo raised several million dollars in early seed stage funding from CRV (Charles River Ventures) in January 2013 and have been stealthily hiring and developing ever since. More recently, Cynthia Breazeal took a leave of absence from the Personal Robots Group at MIT Media Lab and Jibo brought on board additional seed investors Osage University Partners and Cambridge-based Fairhaven Capital Partners.

In BetaBoston, John Lee of Osage is quoted as saying that his firm is “excited about the potential of emotional computing, where consumers can have two-way interaction with their devices through natural forms of communication: speaking, eye contact, body language, and intonation. The nature of this interaction opens up significant opportunities in various fields that require deeper insights into a consumer’s emotional state. Given the team’s exceptional backgrounds, they are the right people to deliver on such a vision.”

Breazeal’s vision is to create robots that can provide parents with a high quality partner in education, provide a life coach for people with chronic health issues, and provide a watchful companion for the elderly that behaves like a friend and not a surveillance system or monitor.

Jibo features two hi-res cameras to recognize and track faces, capture photos and enable immersive video calling. 360° microphones and natural language processing let you talk to JIBO from anywhere in the room. Hands-free reminders and messages, so you’ll never forget and can always be in touch. Artificial Intelligence algorithms learn your preferences to adapt and fit into your life. Like a personal assistant, JIBO proactively helps you, to make everyday tasks simpler and easier. Communicates and expresses using natural social and emotive cues so you understand each other better. [Jibo website]

The first wave of social robots occurred between 1998 and 2009, and their primary characteristic is their ‘pet’ nature. The Tamagotchi (1996 onwards) could be considered a primitive precursor. Social ‘pet’ robots included; Furby 1998 -2007 (reintroduced 2012), AIBO 1999-2006, Keepon 2003-now, Paro 2004-now, iDog, 2005-2009 and Pleo 2006-2009. Some of these were intended for therapeutic settings, like the original Keepon and Paro, but all were intended to create an emotional relationship with people, and not simply to perform functions.

It’s important to specify that social robots have existed in labs and research for some time, so I’m really talking about products that cross the chasm and become consumer products. Robosapien (2004-now) by Mark Tilden at WowWee is one of the few humanoids to come out during this time, but due to the small size and limited interactions, Robosapien seems closer to a pet or smart toy, than to a social robot.

The second wave of social robots is building both on general advances in robotics and specifically on improvements in NLP, natural language processing, leveraging the massive deployment and rapid improvements of voice recognition/response agents like those used by Google, Apple and Amazon.

Computing has gone through several waves, each resulting in billion dollar industries and impacting millions if not billions of people’s lives on global scale. We’ve benefitted from the wave of information, the wave of mobility, the wave of social media. We’re seeing more and more wearable computing and the Internet of Things that combines these three.

Now, we are on the threshold of the next wave of computing: emotion.  And social robotics is a particularly powerful expression of this next wave. [Cynthia Breazeal – Why social robots will change your life]

http://on.ted.com/Breazeal

Robohub is an online platform that brings together leading communicators in robotics research, start-ups, business, and education from around the world. Learn more about us here. If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• Building Social Robots: The Journey of Pleo
• The next era of conversational technology
• On Pepper, Aldebaran and emotional robotics: Interview with Bruno Maisonnier
• Why social robots will change your life
• Robots Podcast: A Code of Ethics for HRI Practitioners
• Robot helps 94-year-old Italian grandmother live independently at home
• What should a robot do? Designing robots that know right from wrong

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

It is a fantastic time for technology. We live in a more connected world, and compared to even a few decades ago, we have vastly improved access to information and content, and have dramatically expanded our ability to connect with one another in interesting new ways to socialize despite time and distance.

As much as I love what technology does for us, and it certainly does quite a bit, our relationship with technology can still be dramatically improved.

Technology can feel dehumanizing. Technology often demands that we think and act more like machines to use it. It treats us like technology, beeping, buzzing, and pushing data and information at us without concern for politeness. It interrupts our conversations, not caring if we understand the information, or determining if the information is wanted. I let my son play on my smartphone once, and now I’m rewarded with daily updates about zombie harvesting – enough! We need to do better.

We need to humanize technology so that it treats us the way we want to be treated.

But there is an even deeper reason to improve this interaction. My fundamental gripe with technology is that it fails to support a more holistic human experience. It falls short in giving people a personally meaningful, emotionally engaging experience.

This shortfall actually limits the ability of technology to support and empower us to succeed, thrive, and grow.

Really?

Yes. Here’s why.

People think, feel, and act not just because of information, but also because of personally meaningful experience. Things have to matter to us, not just inform us, to effect real change.  There is a rich scientific literature on the role of emotion in intelligent decision-making and behavior change.

People who make careers of helping other people — educating others, helping to heal or care for others, or helping people to take better care of themselves — all know the power of high touch on positive human outcomes. Learning new knowledge and skills opens opportunities for growth. Adopting behaviors that keep you healthier increases your chances of thriving as you age. Forging and maintaining stronger relationships with those you love promotes mental and emotional wellbeing. Your life is better when you can do these things.

We should care about these things at face value. And there is urgency to do so.

We are facing juggernaut societal challenges where we cannot rely solely on our institutions to take care of us, to educate us, to keep us healthy. It is too expensive and the growing demand continues to outpace available institution and human resources. We see the headlines: the education crisis, the healthcare crisis, the eldercare crisis, and more.

Millions of people are grappling with these issues every day, and we can help relieve the crushing burden on our institutions by empowering people in their homes.

My vision is that:

… Even in the most time-crunched families, parents will have a reliable, high-quality partner in education for all children. Including our youngest learners who shall enter school ready to learn, or children with special needs, receptive to the quality education they need.

… Those people who struggle with health or chronic disease issues will have the right kind of tools to change behavior, and can independently manage their health and improve their treatment.

… Elders will be able to age independently in their homes with the help of a technology that feels much more like an attentive companion than yet another digital tool or a “Big Brother” monitoring system, relieving pressure on oversubscribed institutions, and remain emotionally connected to their families and loved ones despite distance.

And so much more.

To realize this vision, we all know that technology must be part of the solution. It’s affordable. It’s scalable. It’s accessible at home. This is a good start. But it needs to be more.

Personal technology needs to go beyond giving us access to information anywhere we are. It needs to go beyond opening a communication channel between people. It needs to go beyond being easy to use. It needs to go beyond being cool and desirable. All of these attributes are still critical pieces. But they do not yet form the full answer.

Technology needs to support what people need to be the most empowered to effect positive change in their life and for their loved ones. High tech must support high touch engagement for the best and most lasting results. Only then will technology maximally empower our human ability to fully engage with it — how we experience, think and behave at the intersection of our cognitive, social, emotional and physical capabilities — to succeed, thrive, and grow with technology like never before.

Technology needs to be humanized.

Computing has gone through several waves, each resulting in billion dollar industries and impacting millions if not billions of people’s lives on global scale. We’ve benefitted from the wave of information, the wave of mobility, the wave of social media. We’re seeing more and more wearable computing and the Internet of Things that combines these three.

Now, we are on the threshold of the next wave of computing: emotion.  And social robotics is a particularly powerful expression of this next wave.

This is what social robotics is about. This is why it is so transformative. This is why it is revolutionary.

This is why it will change your life.

This post was originally published on blog.myjibo.com, where Cynthia Breazeal will be curating articles about social robots.

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in watching Cynthia’s ROBOTS: From imagination to market talk, or in reading the following articles:

• Robots14 brings it all together
• Robots Podcast: A Code of Ethics for HRI Practitioners
• What should a robot do? Designing robots that know right from wrong
• Consumer AI devices entering the marketplace

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