Jibo is definitely the droid you're looking for: Friendly, helpful, and intelligent, the desktop device is being called "the world's first family robot."
But Jibo needs your (crowd-funded) help to truly bring your Jetsons dreams to life. Interested customers can visit this Indiegogo page and contribute as little as $7 to make Jibo a reality.
With two high-resolution cameras, 360-degree microphones, and natural language processing, Jibo can see, hear, learn, help, speak, and relate to all members of your family.
But you'd better act fast if you want a robot of your own. By early Wednesday afternoon, the Indiegogo campaign surpassed its $100,000 funding goal, and sold out of the $99 early-bird-special.
And while excited consumers also tapped out the first rounds of $499 Home Edition and $599 Developer Edition Jibos, the company swiftly added another set of 100 each.
For less than the price of an unlocked iPhone 5s, you can purchase the home-edition robot, a JiboAlive Toolkit, and a t-shirt—expected to ship by the 2015 holiday season. Throw in another $100, and the developer edition will arrive in September 2015, with early access to submit content for the Jibo Store.
Keep an eye on the Jibo crowdfunding site through Aug. 15 for more perks and updates from the company, which is aiming for an early-2016 full public release.
"We've achieved greatness in the computing and social media revolutions," Jibo CEO Cynthia Breazeal said in a statement. "The next wave, emotive computing, is upon us and Jibo is a transformative, social and emotive robot that will help people thrive like part of the family."
With a sense of humor and spatial understanding, Jibo can serve as your cooking assistant, event photographer, or even children's storyteller. Just don't expect it to clean up after you or even move from one room to another without a human helping hand.
Standing at 11 inches tall with a six-inch base, Jibo is six pounds of technology, including an HD LCD touch-screen display, ambient LED lighting, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. He runs on a Linux-based platform and ARM-based mobile processor.
At launch, Jibo will understand U.S. English, but will, over time, learn to communicate in other languages.
"Jibo doesn't replace people and human relationships, rather it is designed to support, complement, and extend what we need from others in an affordable, effective and delightful way so that we can succeed, thrive and grow," Breazeal said. "Family robotics will empower people to create the best lives possible for themselves and their loved ones through personally and emotionally meaningful experiences and connection."
Already expected in more than 200 homes and counting, the spinning robot has some humanoid competition. Early last month, SoftBank teamed up with Aldebaran Robotics to develop Pepper, the world's first personal robot that can read emotions. The friendly looking cyborg will begin rolling into Japanese homes in February, for a base price of 198,000 yen ($1,931).
Stephanie began as a PCMag reporter in May 2012. She moved to New York City from Frederick, Md., where she worked for four years as a multimedia reporter at the second-largest daily newspaper in Maryland. She interned at Baltimore magazine and graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (in the town of Indiana, in the state of Pennsylvania) with a degree in journalism and mass communications.