Roomba’s Creator Is Making an AI Robot Pet That Can’t Lie to You

There’s a new robot pet in town—or, at least, there will be—and it’s made by some of the same people who popularized the robot vacuum back in the early 2000s. Colin Angle, former iRobot CEO (and now cofounder, along with iRobot alums Ira Renfrew and Chris Jones, of robotics company Familiar Machines & Magic), has debuted a nonverbal companion called a “Familiar,” according to The Verge. Familiar Machines & Magic showcased two of its robots at the WSJ Future of Everything conference this week and plans to launch the pets next year. “By design, it will avoid giving factual advice about things that maybe it shouldn’t be giving factual advice about,” Angle told The Verge’s Jennifer Pattison Tuohy in an interview. In other words, it can’t lie to you. Instead of talking, the robot will make nonverbal sounds and communicate via “expression and body language.” It’ll feature camera vision, multiple microphones and 23 degrees of movement via its four legs, head, and blinking eyes. You can get a sense of how it will behave and move in a looping video on Familiar Machines & Magic’s website, which shows the pet giving a high-five, doing yoga with its owner, sitting and wagging its nub-like tail