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When we talk about robots, our thoughts immediately turn to the machine aspect of the science: mechanical limbs, motors, electronic circuitry and so on. We visualize bipedal robots that climb stairs, skate and play soccer, and four legged ones that run as fast as cheetahs. We owe this to a number of companies, including Honda and Boston Dynamics, now owned by Google, and initiatives like DARPA. Over the past few years, such organizations have been pouring money into developing highly versatile mechanical contraptions that mimic the way humans and animals move. But now, an MIT professor and social robotics pioneer, Cynthia Breazeal, is leading a 10 man team into developing the soul rather than the body. Their creation is called JIBO and dubbed the ‘the world's first family robot’. It isn’t nearly as limber as the humanoids you find at the Robot Soccer World Cup. it can however perform many tasks that ASIMO and Big Dog couldn’t conceive of.

Standing at 11 inches high, weighing 6 pounds, and obtainable for 500 dollars, JIBO comes equipped with two high resolution cameras, 360° microphones, and speakers. Much more important though is the fact that it uses artificial Intelligence algorithms to learn your preferences and adapt into your life. Natural language processing lets you talk to it.

It’s a smart little robot. For instance, not only is it capable of reminding people around it of important tasks, it is clever enough to recognize each member of the household and deliver the right message to the right person. Another trick: it uses natural cues such as movement, speech, and smile detection to know when someone is posing and snaps a picture. And there’s also a proprietary mobile app, naturally.

Developers Edition and Application Store

JIBO comes with JIBOAlive Toolkit; the developer edition comes with a full SDK. The Toolkit can be used to teach JIBO new tricks. The SDK can be used to develop new skills and content for the JIBO Store.

The toolkit includes a web based JavaScript visual programming tool, animation-creation tool, and virtual simulator, a library of animations, sounds, and vocalizations, and text-to-speech (TTS) tool for JIBO’s voice. The SDK version includes all of the above in addition to JavaScript API access to JIBO’s sensory systems, eclipse plugin, and sample source code.

Purchasing developer edition also means that you will be enrolled in the JIBO Developer Program and have direct access to support and advice from our team.

Timeline

The Indiegogo campaign launched on July 16 with a hundred thousand dollar goal. So far it raised just under 1.2 million (as of July 28). The product should finalize electronics and mechanical designs, undergo engineering, design, and production validation tests all the way until early Q3 of 2015. In late Q3 2015, the developer version will be released. The JIBO store will launch around that time too. Later in December the consumer version of the JIBOAlive Toolkit and JIBO app will be made available. Full public release is scheduled for early 2016.