Imagine a robot that recognises you, understands what you say, helps you do your daily tasks and, on top of all that, has a friendly personality. JIBO promised to be that robot-friend but his story ended with a farewell dance.

What went wrong?

A robot you can like

The world looked different in 2014.

Amazon Alexa nor Google Assistant were out yet. No Echos or smart speakers. The only widely available voice assistant was Siri.

And then, in the summer of 2014, JIBO showed up.

JIBO was a culmination of years of research in social robotics done by Cynthia Breazeal and her team from Personal Robots Group at MIT Media Lab. JIBO was designed to be more than a robot — to be your companion and your assistant, to be the centre of your smart home. His (JIBO preferred pronoun is he/him) presence was closer to that of Pixar robots — he had a friendly, rounded body with one big eye to make eye contact and a playful personality. Everything around JIBO’s design was made to make him likeable.