Roomba pioneer unveils AI pet robot to comfort lonely seniors

Colin Angle, who co-founded iRobot and launched the Roomba vacuum robot, unveiled a four-legged AI companion called the Familiar on Tuesday at The Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything conference, promising a pet-like presence that learns a household's rhythms without the care demands of a living animal.

The prototype takes aim at a gap advocates for aging adults have long flagged: loneliness. Angle says the device, made possible only by recent breakthroughs in generative AI, could reach retired people who crave the emotional comfort of a pet but want to avoid the feeding, vet bills and grief that come with one.

Angle, now CEO of his new venture Familiar Machines & Magic, described the bulldog-sized robot as having doe-like eyes, bear-cub ears and touch-sensitive fake fur. Rather than speaking, the Familiar makes emotive, animal-like sounds and uses audio input to learn from those around it, gradually adapting its behavior through interaction. "We chose a form factor that's not a human, not a dog, not a cat, because we wanted to steer away from all of those preconceptions," Angle said at the conference.

"The challenge is to make something that's not a watch-me toy. This is about having something that you want to hug, you want to pet. When it's happy, that makes you happy. And it is large enough or mobile enough to follow you to the kitchen or drag you off the couch and take a walk," Angle told The Associated Press.

Angle said that leaps in generative AI made the device feasible only now. "I couldn't have done this six months ago," he said. The robot is aimed at retired adults who shy away from pet ownership. "Not because people suddenly stop enjoying pets, but the fear and obligation of caring for them are such that people are very reluctant to get new pets at older ages," Angle said.

Maja Matari, a computer science professor at the University of Southern California who co-founded the field of socially assistive robotics 25 years ago, offered an enthusiastic first impression of the prototype. She said she "immediately got down on the ground near it and had to hug it and pet it, then started to play with it to see what it would do." Matari said "cute, personalized and vulnerable is much more appealing and lovable than the alternative," adding that "before generative AI, robots could not readily understand what people were saying."

Angle co-founded iRobot in 1990 and launched the first Roomba in 2002, but stepped down as CEO and chairman in 2024 after Amazon abandoned its planned acquisition of the company. The Familiar's name draws from folklore, referencing the animal companions found in mythology and literature. Sony introduced the robotic dog Aibo in the late 1990s and revived the concept in 2018, but Angle argues that today's generative AI enables a qualitatively different bond between machine and owner — one that evolves over time rather than cycling through preset responses.

Familiar Machines & Magic is headquartered in Woburn, Massachusetts. No pricing or release timeline has been announced for the Familiar.