The man who put a Roomba in every home wants to replace your dog with a plush robot

https://media.thenextweb.com/2026/05/roomba-creator-familiar-machines-ai-pet-robot.avif

TL;DR

Roomba creator Colin Angle unveiled the Familiar, an AI pet robot with touch-sensitive fur that adapts to your daily habits.

Colin Angle, the robotics engineer who co-founded iRobot and spent 25 years turning the Roomba into the world’s most widely adopted home robot, has unveiled the prototype for his next act: a four-legged, plush-covered AI companion designed to follow you around your house, adapt to your daily habits, and make you feel something when it greets you at the door.

The robot is called the Familiar, and the company behind it is Familiar Machines & Magic, a startup that operated in stealth mode in Woburn, Massachusetts until Angle brought a working prototype to the Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything conference in New York on 4 May. The device is roughly the size of a bulldog, with doe-like eyes, bear cub ears and paws, and touch-sensitive synthetic fur....

Copyright of this story solely belongs to thenextweb.com. To see the full text click HERE

Read more

https://i.ibb.co/8g8tHRXQ/Screenshot-2026-06-25-at-11-52-12-AM.png

As China's working-age population shrinks, a consensus is emerging that it must deploy embodied AI robots into as many tasks as possible, as soon as possible

Sponsor Posts Fast, affordable law for startups — Soxton automates startup legal so founders can move faster and sleep better. We handle incorporation, advisor, employment and commercial contracts. Join the waitlist for early access! Stop vibe coding analytics — Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards.