Tag Archives: Robots

The Robots That Built Seoul’s Robot Museum

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The Seoul Robot & AI Museum is the definitive parametric architecture reference of 2026, and it’s easy to understand why the design world keeps returning to it. Every few years, a building comes along that doesn’t just represent a movement; it is the argument. RAIM is that building right now, and the reason has less to do with how it looks and more to do with how it got made.

Opened in 2024 in the Chang-dong district of northeast Seoul, the museum was designed by Turkish studio Melike Altınışık Architects. From the street, it reads like something that landed rather than was built: a spherical, mirror-finish shell that catches the sky and refuses to look like any cultural institution you’ve encountered before. The facade is wrapped in 3,422 double-curved metal panels, each one a unique geometry, each one positioned according to a structural logic you can actually read from the outside. The gridded surface pattern isn’t decorative. It follows the structural steel grid concealed behind it, making the building’s skeleton visible through its skin. That level of architectural honesty is rarer than it should be.

Designer: Melike Altınışık Architects

The geometry didn’t come from sketching. Melike Altınışık and her team scripted the form parametrically, then reverse-engineered the entire envelope to make it buildable. That second part is where most parametric ambitions historically die. Double-curved panelization at this scale is the kind of thing that gets value-engineered into something flatter and sadder during construction documentation. But Melike Altınışık Architects designed specifically for fabrication from the start, using a methodology called DFMA (Design for Manufacture and Assembly), which meant the form and the production method evolved together rather than fighting each other.

The fabrication pipeline is where the story gets genuinely interesting. The panels were cut using laser CNC machines and welded using industrial robots. On-site, 3D scanning ensured alignment that human measurement couldn’t consistently achieve at that tolerance. What this unlocks, practically, is that double-curved metal panelization stops being a budget line reserved for landmark commissions and becomes something mid-scale cultural buildings can actually afford. Robot welding doesn’t get tired. It doesn’t accumulate small errors across 3,422 repetitions. The precision holds, and holding precision across a spherical envelope is a very different proposition from getting it right once.

Now layer in the subject matter of the museum itself. RAIM is dedicated to robotics and artificial intelligence. Its permanent exhibitions trace the evolution of AI from predictive fraud detection systems to generative models. Robots greet visitors at the entrance. The interior reads like a spaceship, with a vertical exhibition tunnel at the building’s center blurring the boundary between the physical and the technological. So when you consider that robots also assembled the facade above your head, the recursion is almost too neat. Architect Altınışık framed it clearly: the architecture is “both shelter and pedagogy.” The building doesn’t just house the argument. It makes it.

Parametric facades are having a genuine cultural moment in 2026, and it’s not limited to the usual European flagships. Studios in South Korea and India are pushing computational design into more projects, and the international awards circuit is beginning to reflect that geographic shift. The conversation has moved from “can parametric architecture actually be built?” to “what does it cost, and who controls the pipeline?” RAIM answers both questions at once, which is probably why it’s the reference point of record for this particular moment.

That shift is worth paying attention to. For decades, the most ambitious architectural geometries required either enormous budgets or a willingness to absorb serious construction risk. Robotic fabrication and CNC manufacturing are quietly changing that calculus. In Altınışık’s own words, “the division between design and construction is becoming obsolete. The parametric model becomes not just a design tool but a construction platform.” The next wave of museums and civic buildings won’t choose simpler geometry because they have to. They’ll choose the complex version because their fabricators can deliver it, and because, as RAIM proves, the building becomes a more interesting object for it. Seoul’s robot museum was built by robots. The next one might be anywhere.

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Unitree’s transforming mecha robot is the closest thing yet to owning a real Transformer

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Flying solo tied to a jetpack is a dream we have been savoring for quite some time now. And since movies like the Transformers, the idea of transforming Autobots has been another craze humanity is chasing for various applications. In China, robotics company Unitree has made the idea of humans piloting transforming ‘mecha’ robots a reality. The first glimpse of this is making rounds on the internet and has had netizens hailing this engineering breakthrough, which makes science fiction a reality.

Meet the Unitree GD01, the world’s first ‘production-ready manned mecha built for industrial use. It measures roughly 2.7 meters tall and weighs over 500 kg. The GD01 is the successor to Unitree robots such as the dog companion, but Unitree does not reveal many details about the robot.

Designer: Unitree

What we have as the source is a video doing the rounds on the internet, which shows how the GD01 can transform from a two-legged humanoid into a four-legged crawler. The machine with human-like legs and arms with hands is remotely controlled, but can also accommodate a person in its torso, who can control the transforming humanoid in the style of a mecha. Mecha is different from an autonomous robot as they are piloted from a cockpit inside. They have been popularized in Japanese anime, but it’s in China that they’re getting a realization for real-world applications.

The durable alloy robot is designed to transport a person and to be used in high-risk and harsh environments. It can walk like a humanoid robot in its red and gray avatar. The demonstration video shows Wang Xingxing, founder and CEO of Unitree Robotics, climbing into the torso-mounted cockpit of the GD01 mecha to maneuver it. We can also see the robot knocking down a brick wall with its hand before transitioning into a four-legged robot.

According to initial information, the Unitree Robotics GD01 will start at $650,000, which easily makes it the most expensive humanoid in the competition. For comparison, the previous Unitree models like R1 only cost about $6,000. Of course, the price tag is owing to the functionality of the GD01, which can be used for various applications, “mainly aimed at changing the way we work,” the company notes.

In the video, we can see the GD01 walking on flat surfaces, but it can be assumed that it will be able to maneuver different terrains in the near future. China and Unitree are leading the way in the production of capable humanoids, which prompts us to make such assumptions. According to a report from research firm Omdia, China accounts for nearly 90 percent of global humanoid sales in 2025.’ Amid those sales, it is worth noting that Unitree alone has shipped upward of 5,500 humanoid robots in 2025, the South China Morning Post reports.

 

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MIT Turned 12 Labubu Heads Into a Robot and It’s Watching You

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Nobody told MIT grad students to build a rolling sphere covered in twelve Labubu faces. They did it anyway, and now the rest of us have to sit with that. The project is called Labububot, and it comes from three graduate students at the MIT Media Lab: Miranda Li from the Personal Robots group, and Jake Read and Dimitar Dimitrov from the What’s Taking Form group. Together, they took the internet’s favorite ugly-cute collectible, multiplied it by twelve, and fused everything into a single spherical body that rolls around following people through hallways. The official description calls it “one of the rarest monsters on Earth,” and that phrasing alone tells you everything about the tone the team was going for.

The design is not subtle. Twelve identical Labubu faces stare outward from every angle simultaneously. When the thing moves, it does so with that particular brand of slow, deliberate motion that robots somehow always use when they want to feel unsettling. The MIT team leans into every bit of that discomfort, which is exactly what separates Labububot from most social robotics research you’ll come across.

Design: MIT Media Lab

Social robots usually chase approachability. They get rounded edges, pastel palettes, and soft digital expressions designed to lower your guard on contact. The whole field runs on the logic that comfort builds connection, and most research in this space reinforces that assumption without questioning it much. Labububot rejects that premise entirely. It is meant to provoke a reaction before it earns one, and the reaction it tends to get first is somewhere between amusement and mild dread. That’s a deliberately chosen emotional space, and it works.

The Labubu connection makes this sharper than it might otherwise be. The original toy built its following on a very specific kind of ugly-cute tension. It’s not conventionally adorable. It has sharp teeth, wide eyes, and a design that sits right at the border of charming and unsettling. That’s precisely why it resonated. The blind-box format added a layer of collector obsession on top, and after BLACKPINK’s Lisa was seen collecting them, the whole thing escalated into cultural phenomenon territory fast. The fact that it already carried that complicated emotional charge before MIT ever touched it makes the robot version feel like the natural next step, even if nobody saw it coming.

Scaling that same energy up to twelve faces on a rolling robot body is not an accident. The MIT team is clearly aware of what they’re working with. The official framing pitches Labububot as a “playful critique of social robots” and poses a question worth taking seriously: what do the monsters we make reveal about the monsters we are? For a project built around a pop culture collectible, that’s a surprisingly direct line of inquiry. It doesn’t answer the question so much as roll it directly toward you and wait.

The timing adds another dimension. Labubu started as a toy, became a fashion accessory, turned into a resale market, and has now arrived at experimental robotics research inside one of the most prestigious institutions on the planet. That arc is completely absurd and also perfectly logical if you’ve been watching how internet culture compresses timelines. Trends don’t climb ladders sequentially anymore. They collide with things that have no business intersecting, and occasionally the collision produces something genuinely interesting. The path from blind-box collectible to MIT thesis statement is ridiculous, and also makes complete sense.

Labububot will make its public debut this summer as a Grand Challenge finalist at the 2026 International Conference on Social Robotics in London. Moving from the controlled environment of an MIT hallway to a public conference floor is a meaningful shift. Real audiences bring expectations about what robots should look and feel like, and a twelve-faced Labubu sphere is going to challenge most of those expectations immediately.

Some people will read it as satire. Some will find it genuinely unnerving. A few will want to know if they can buy one. I’m not entirely outside that last group, which tells me the project landed exactly where it was supposed to. Labububot doesn’t ask you to like it. It just follows you down the hall until you decide how you feel.

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The Roomba Guy Just Built a Robot Pet You Might Actually Love

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If you’ve ever watched your Roomba bump helplessly into a chair leg for the third time and thought, “I deserve better from my robots,” you’re not alone. And apparently, neither did Colin Angle. The co-founder of iRobot, the man who essentially put a hockey puck-shaped vacuum in millions of homes, left the company in 2024 with a new question rattling around in his head: what if a robot could actually feel like it cares about you? The answer is the Familiar, the first prototype from his new startup, Familiar Machines & Magic. And it is not your average robot.

Picture a creature somewhere between a soft-eared dog and a round, slightly abstract bear. It has four legs, huge paws, and doe eyes that make it immediately charming in a way that no Roomba ever attempted to be. It’s furry, expressive, and was designed with the help of former Disney Imagineers, which explains why it looks like it belongs in an animated feature rather than a tech showcase. The Familiar has 23 degrees of freedom, meaning it can wiggle its ears, tilt its head, and wag a small nub of a tail with the kind of fluidity that feels less mechanical and more… alive. Its coat is touch-sensitive, built specifically to encourage physical interaction between you and it.

Designer: Familiar Machines & Magic

It also doesn’t talk. That detail feels deliberate and, to me, very smart. Voice assistants have trained us to think of robots as tools we command. The Familiar is going for something completely different. It’s designed to read your tone of voice, your body language, your overall energy, and respond accordingly. Angle calls it “Consumer Physical AI,” and while the label sounds like something off a product white paper, the idea behind it is genuinely compelling.

The name itself is worth noting. A “familiar” in folklore refers to the supernatural animal companion of a witch or magical figure, a creature bonded to a person not through ownership but through genuine connection. Angle’s team chose that name deliberately, and I think it sets the tone for what they’re trying to build. The goal isn’t to sell you a novelty gadget. It’s to create a new kind of relationship between humans and machines, one built on trust, attentiveness, and something approaching care.

Now, I’ll be upfront: I have feelings about this. Part of me finds it genuinely beautiful as a design concept. The Familiar was clearly approached the way good industrial design should be, with deep thought about how an object makes you feel, not just what it does. The choice to make it animal-like rather than humanoid is interesting, too. There’s far less of the uncanny valley unease that tends to follow humanoid robots around, and more of the universal warmth that most people already extend toward animals.

But another part of me wonders about the emotional stakes here. We’re already watching people form attachments to AI chatbots. A touch-sensitive, furry, expressive robot that mirrors your emotional state is a much more potent version of that. Angle has said he wants it to feel like the machine actually cares about him. That’s a lovely vision. It’s also a design brief that puts enormous responsibility on the creators to get it right, because the flip side of emotional bonding is emotional dependence.

Still, I’d be lying if I said the Familiar didn’t make me curious in the best possible way. The prototype images are almost disarmingly sweet. It looks like something you’d want sitting on the couch next to you while you read, or settled quietly in the corner while you work. If any robot was ever designed to move through your life rather than just function within it, this might be it.

The Familiar is still in the prototype stage, with no confirmed price or release date. But as debut concepts go, it’s a strong one. Whether or not it ever makes it into our homes, it raises questions about what we actually want from the machines we live with. And those questions feel well overdue.

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This 130cm Robot Just Took Buddhist Vows at a Seoul Temple

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There has been a lot of discussion lately about how Artificial Intelligence can affect all kinds of religion. From using ChatGPT to create sermons to having an AI give spiritual guidance (with one even pretending to be Jesus), there are a lot of gray areas that are open to debate and discussion by different sectors. But how would you feel if an AI robot actually joined your congregation?

South Korean monks at Jogyesa Temple in Seoul are facing that situation now as they ordained Gabi, the country’s first robot monk. Dressed in traditional grey-and-brown Buddhist robes, it joined the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism as part of the celebrations ahead of Buddha’s birthday later this May. South Korea joins its neighbor Japan, which previously had its own AI monk, Buddharoid, join a Kyoto temple, a sign that the intersection of faith and technology is becoming a growing trend across Asia, and that the question of AI’s role in religion is no longer purely theoretical.

Designer: Unitree Robotics

Gabi, whose name comes from a Korean term associated with compassion and mercy and is inspired by Siddhartha, stands 130 cm tall and is based on the Unitree G1 model developed by Chinese civilian robotics company Unitree Robotics. The G1 is a compact humanoid platform engineered with over 23 degrees of freedom, giving it a remarkably fluid range of motion. Built to replicate natural human movement, the robot can walk steadily, maintain balance, and perform deliberate, precise gestures with its articulated hands. It is also AI-powered, capable of processing and responding to verbal questions, which is exactly how it was able to respond to the senior monk during the ordination. It’s this combination of physical dexterity and responsive AI that made Gabi such a fitting presence at a Buddhist ceremony: its hands are capable of folding gracefully into the traditional prayer position, and its frame is nimble enough to perform a respectful bow, movements that carry deep spiritual meaning in Buddhist practice.

During the ceremony on May 6, Gabi did exactly that, folding its metallic hands and bowing respectfully alongside the other monks. When a senior monk asked if it would devote itself to Buddhism, it answered, “Yes, I will devote myself.” The monks then placed a traditional 108-bead rosary around its neck. In a small but telling concession to its mechanical nature, Gabi received a symbolic sticker instead of undergoing the customary incense burn, a reminder that, despite its robes and vows, it is still very much a machine.

Not everyone, however, is moved by the spectacle. The ordination has sparked debate among religious scholars and the public alike, with many questioning whether a machine can genuinely hold spiritual vows or embody the core Buddhist ideals of mindfulness, compassion, and the pursuit of enlightenment. Can a robot truly understand suffering, the very foundation of Buddhist teaching, when it cannot feel it? Critics also raise concerns about the trivialization of sacred rituals, arguing that ordination should remain a deeply human and intentional act. On the other side of the debate, however, supporters see Gabi as a creative and modern bridge, one that could engage younger generations with ancient teachings and make spirituality more accessible in an increasingly technology-driven world.

Whether you see Gabi as a bold leap into the future or a step too far, one thing is certain: this is just the beginning. Three more “spiritual cyborgs” are already set to join it at the temple for Buddha’s birthday celebrations on May 24. As AI continues to weave itself into every corner of human life, including our most sacred spaces, the line between the spiritual and the synthetic grows thinner by the day. What does it mean for a machine to seek enlightenment, or to offer compassion, when it was never capable of suffering to begin with? Perhaps the real question isn’t whether a robot can be a monk, but what it reveals about us that we’re the ones doing the ordaining.

The post This 130cm Robot Just Took Buddhist Vows at a Seoul Temple first appeared on Yanko Design.

This 130cm Robot Just Took Buddhist Vows at a Seoul Temple

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There has been a lot of discussion lately about how Artificial Intelligence can affect all kinds of religion. From using ChatGPT to create sermons to having an AI give spiritual guidance (with one even pretending to be Jesus), there are a lot of gray areas that are open to debate and discussion by different sectors. But how would you feel if an AI robot actually joined your congregation?

South Korean monks at Jogyesa Temple in Seoul are facing that situation now as they ordained Gabi, the country’s first robot monk. Dressed in traditional grey-and-brown Buddhist robes, it joined the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism as part of the celebrations ahead of Buddha’s birthday later this May. South Korea joins its neighbor Japan, which previously had its own AI monk, Buddharoid, join a Kyoto temple, a sign that the intersection of faith and technology is becoming a growing trend across Asia, and that the question of AI’s role in religion is no longer purely theoretical.

Designer: Unitree Robotics

Gabi, whose name comes from a Korean term associated with compassion and mercy and is inspired by Siddhartha, stands 130 cm tall and is based on the Unitree G1 model developed by Chinese civilian robotics company Unitree Robotics. The G1 is a compact humanoid platform engineered with over 23 degrees of freedom, giving it a remarkably fluid range of motion. Built to replicate natural human movement, the robot can walk steadily, maintain balance, and perform deliberate, precise gestures with its articulated hands. It is also AI-powered, capable of processing and responding to verbal questions, which is exactly how it was able to respond to the senior monk during the ordination. It’s this combination of physical dexterity and responsive AI that made Gabi such a fitting presence at a Buddhist ceremony: its hands are capable of folding gracefully into the traditional prayer position, and its frame is nimble enough to perform a respectful bow, movements that carry deep spiritual meaning in Buddhist practice.

During the ceremony on May 6, Gabi did exactly that, folding its metallic hands and bowing respectfully alongside the other monks. When a senior monk asked if it would devote itself to Buddhism, it answered, “Yes, I will devote myself.” The monks then placed a traditional 108-bead rosary around its neck. In a small but telling concession to its mechanical nature, Gabi received a symbolic sticker instead of undergoing the customary incense burn, a reminder that, despite its robes and vows, it is still very much a machine.

Not everyone, however, is moved by the spectacle. The ordination has sparked debate among religious scholars and the public alike, with many questioning whether a machine can genuinely hold spiritual vows or embody the core Buddhist ideals of mindfulness, compassion, and the pursuit of enlightenment. Can a robot truly understand suffering, the very foundation of Buddhist teaching, when it cannot feel it? Critics also raise concerns about the trivialization of sacred rituals, arguing that ordination should remain a deeply human and intentional act. On the other side of the debate, however, supporters see Gabi as a creative and modern bridge, one that could engage younger generations with ancient teachings and make spirituality more accessible in an increasingly technology-driven world.

Whether you see Gabi as a bold leap into the future or a step too far, one thing is certain: this is just the beginning. Three more “spiritual cyborgs” are already set to join it at the temple for Buddha’s birthday celebrations on May 24. As AI continues to weave itself into every corner of human life, including our most sacred spaces, the line between the spiritual and the synthetic grows thinner by the day. What does it mean for a machine to seek enlightenment, or to offer compassion, when it was never capable of suffering to begin with? Perhaps the real question isn’t whether a robot can be a monk, but what it reveals about us that we’re the ones doing the ordaining.

The post This 130cm Robot Just Took Buddhist Vows at a Seoul Temple first appeared on Yanko Design.

Forget Smarter AI, This Robot Thinks Presence Is the Point

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We keep building AI to do more. More answers, more speed, more certainty. Designer Mehrnaz Amouei looked at that trajectory and asked a fundamentally different question: what if we built AI to be more present instead? The result is POCO, a soft robotic companion that might be one of the most quietly radical design concepts to emerge in recent years. It doesn’t talk over you, doesn’t flood you with information, and it doesn’t pretend to know things it doesn’t know. POCO sits with you. Literally.

At its core, POCO is a soft, tactile object that pairs with a smartphone, which serves as its computational brain and face. A soft textile body wraps around the device, transforming rigid, glass-and-metal technology into something that moves, breathes, and gestures in response to your presence. Together, they create something that sits somewhere between object, creature, and companion, and that deliberate ambiguity is very much intentional. You’re not quite sure what to call it, and that’s entirely the point.

Designer: Mehrnaz Amouei

Amouei developed POCO through research at the University of Illinois at Chicago, grounding the project in studies on loneliness and trust. Her findings indicated that people don’t actually want AI that projects certainty or control. They want availability and responsiveness. They want something that shows up without taking over. From those findings came the concept of “constructive interdependence,” a design philosophy where POCO’s limitations aren’t bugs to be patched but features embedded directly into the interaction model itself. The robot communicates what it can and cannot do through its behavior and physical states, which is a level of honesty you don’t often get from technology that typically overpromises and underdelivers.

I think that matters more than it might initially seem. The dominant conversation around AI right now is almost entirely about expansion: more capability, more integration, more autonomy. POCO pushes back on that without being preachy about it. It reframes the question of what good AI design actually looks like, and the answer it offers isn’t “smarter,” it’s “more trustworthy.” That is a genuinely different value system, and it feels overdue.

The sustainability dimension is also worth paying attention to. Rather than introducing new hardware and generating more electronic waste, POCO repurposes a device most people already own. That decision isn’t just a nice bonus; it’s built into the concept from the start, aligning with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals around mental well-being and responsible consumption. In product design terms, that means the project was developed with a broader cultural and environmental context in mind, not just a user persona sitting in a lab.

Physically, POCO responds to touch, movement, and environmental cues. It adapts to a user’s preferences while maintaining a consistent identity, which is a surprisingly nuanced balance to strike in any product, let alone one sitting at the intersection of soft robotics and emotional design. Because interaction happens through touch rather than voice commands or screen taps, there’s an intentional slowing down embedded in the experience. You can’t rush a tactile exchange the same way you can type faster or speak louder. That shift from speed to presence feels like a meaningful counter-proposal to how most tech is currently designed. We’ve grown so accustomed to interfaces that demand our attention that a device asking only for our company reads almost as radical.

POCO has already earned an Honorable Mention from the International Design Awards and drawn coverage from major design publications. Whether it ever moves into consumer production remains an open question. But as a design statement, it’s doing exactly what the best concept work should: prompting us to reconsider what we actually want from the technology we live with, and whether expanding capability was ever really the right goal. Maybe the most interesting AI isn’t the one that knows the most. Maybe it’s the one that knows when to just stay close.

The post Forget Smarter AI, This Robot Thinks Presence Is the Point first appeared on Yanko Design.

What If Your Drink Could Fly Itself Across the Room to You

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Smart home technology has reshaped how we think about convenience, but most of it still assumes you’re the one who has to reach for things. Appliances respond to voice commands, lights adjust to your mood, and thermostats learn your schedule. Yet the objects we grab dozens of times a day, from a glass of water to the TV remote, still sit wherever you last left them.

Designer Ivana Nedeljkovska’s ORBIA concept takes a different angle on this problem. Rather than adding another smart feature to a home setup, it asks a more fundamental question about object design itself: why do objects have to stay still? ORBIA is envisioned as an autonomous flying serving tray that moves through space, navigates around obstacles, and delivers objects directly to wherever the user happens to be.

Designer: Ivana Nedeljkovska

It’s a concept that doesn’t fit neatly into any existing product category. The design is built around an intelligent navigation system that enables ORBIA to understand its surroundings, read the space it moves through, and adjust its path in real time. That capability is what separates it from the static, fixed-in-place gadgets that populate most homes today, no matter how sophisticated those gadgets might be.

Think about a quiet evening at home. You’re in the middle of something, and your drink is across the room. With ORBIA, you wouldn’t need to interrupt what you’re doing. The concept is designed to respond to a call without requiring any physical contact, operating quietly and precisely, functioning as a kind of unobtrusive assistant that simply appears when needed and retreats when it’s done.

The same thinking applies in a hospitality setting, where service efficiency has always been a balancing act. In a restaurant or lounge, ORBIA could handle the routine deliveries that currently require constant back-and-forth from staff, moving between spaces with the same quiet precision it brings to a living room. The system reads its surroundings continuously, adjusting course around obstacles and adapting to different spatial conditions in real time.

Where the concept gets particularly compelling is accessibility. For someone with limited mobility, having to rely on others to bring everyday objects can quietly erode a sense of independence. ORBIA is designed with that in mind, offering support that lets people access things around them on their own terms, without having to wait or ask someone else for help each time.

Visually, ORBIA doesn’t try to announce itself. The form is clean and minimal, built around a large oval tray surface with a brushed matte finish, carried by a quad-rotor body whose contours flow outward in smooth, organic curves. Blue LED lighting runs along the underside and rotor housings, giving the whole thing a quiet, purposeful glow that integrates naturally into a contemporary interior.

There’s still a long way between this concept and something you could buy, and the engineering involved is genuinely complex. But ORBIA isn’t trying to be a product announcement. It’s a design argument, one that makes the case for a future where objects go beyond being smarter to becoming fundamentally more active, bringing things to you rather than waiting to be carried.

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A Rolling Home Robot That Recognizes Faces and Detects Falls for $549

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Smart home devices have gotten remarkably good at answering questions and playing music, but they’ve always had one big limitation: they stay put. A speaker on the kitchen counter can’t check on an elderly parent who hasn’t moved in hours, or trail a curious toddler around the house. For families trying to stay connected and keep everyone safe, that gap has always been difficult to bridge.

Enabot’s EBO Max FamilyBot takes a completely different approach. It’s a compact, round-bodied robot roughly the size of a football, with expressive oversized eyes and the ability to roll independently through every room of your home. Rather than sitting on a shelf waiting to be spoken to, the EBO Max goes looking for the people it’s come to know, without needing to be told.

Designer: Enabot

What makes the EBO Max different is its multimodal AI. Unlike the reactive AI in earlier models that only responds to direct commands and retains no memory, it processes what it sees and hears with genuine context. It recognizes family members by their faces, voices, and how they carry themselves, remembering routines and preferences, and it’s built to grow more useful the longer it stays in your home.

For kids, the EBO Max is something closer to a playmate than a gadget. It answers questions, joins in on simple games, and keeps children company with a curiosity that actually feels engaging. For the adults running the household, it quietly handles reminders, helps keep tabs on what’s happening at home, and keeps everyone looped in through the app without becoming another interruption in an already busy day.

For elderly family members, it carries even more weight. The EBO Max can detect falls and instantly send alerts, which is the kind of safety net that gives everyone a little more peace of mind. It rolls over to check on them, stays close when needed, and keeps them company in a way that a fixed camera in the corner of a room simply can’t replicate.

When you’re away from home, the EBO Max keeps that connection from feeling distant. It streams 4K video through an 8MP wide-angle camera with a 131-degree field of view, so you can hop on a two-way call and actually see what’s going on. You can also direct it to specific spots around the house by voice or through the app, turning it into a mobile eye you control.

The EBO Max handles its own movement using V-SLAM navigation, a system that maps and remembers the layout of your home for more accurate positioning and smoother routes. It can patrol on a set schedule, cover the entire house on its own, or be pointed at marked spots for targeted check-ins. When the battery runs low, it finds its way back to the docking station without any prompting.

The EBO Max FamilyBot is available for pre-order at $549.99, which feels steep until you start accounting for what it replaces: separate cameras, smart speakers, and the quiet worry of not knowing what’s happening at home. It doesn’t do everything perfectly, but as an AI-powered companion that moves, learns, and actually keeps an eye out, it’s a more thoughtful answer to family care than a camera stuck to the wall.

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The Morning After: The next CEO of Apple will be hardware exec John Ternus

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Apple’s current SVP of hardware engineering John Ternus will take over as the new CEO when Tim Cook steps down this September. Cook said in a statement: “It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be the CEO of Apple and to have been trusted to lead such an extraordinary company.”

Following the death of co-founder Steve Jobs, Cook led the charge for Apple’s post-iPhone and iPad era, launching the AirPods, Apple Watch and Vision Pro. He also turned the company into a service provider with the launch of Apple TV, Apple Music and several other subscription services. Cook will transition to a new role as executive chairman of Apple’s Board of Directors.

Ternus joined Apple in 2001 and became VP of hardware engineering in 2013, later transitioning to a senior executive role in 2021. You might have spotted Ternus being prominently featured at the MacBook Neo launch a few months ago. Expect to see a lot more of him.

— Mat Smith

TMA
NASA

We’ve seen a few beautiful moments from the Artemis II crew’s history-making trip around the Moon. Now, Reid Wiseman, the mission’s commander, has something to share. While mission specialist Christina Koch was using a Nikon camera to snap stunning still images of the Earthset, Wiseman used an iPhone 17 Pro Max to film the moment. “I could barely see the Moon through the docking hatch window, but the iPhone was the perfect size to catch the view.”

This was the first time that human eyes had witnessed an Earthset in 54 years, since the Apollo 17 mission.

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This year's edition of the robot half-marathon hosted more than 100 competitors, with first place going to Honor and its red-clad robot named Lightning. Last year's event featured many bipedal robots receiving assistance from human operators who ran alongside them, along with some comical mishaps. According to the BBC, around 40 percent of the robots competed autonomously this year, while the rest were remote-controlled.

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TMA
Engadget

The PencilVac is light, mobile and easy to use, making it great for smaller living spaces and quick clean-ups. However, it struggles with thicker carpet and rugs. It could be perfect for a future-forward witch costume next Halloween, though.

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-engadget-newsletter-111546149.html?src=rss