conversation
Family greetings, questions, stories
Owner verifiedVerified March 2019
- Control mode
- Autonomous
- Human intervention
- None
Research record R-032Discontinued
Jibo
By Jibo, Inc. · United States · announced July 2014
The first social robot for the home and the category's defining cautionary tale: when the servers died, so did he.
Broader research scope
This is a research record, not a curated recommendation.
The main field guide selects 14 companion robots for deeper review. This entry belongs to a separate 53-record index that also covers industrial, research, and developer systems.
Research summary
What the record says.
Jibo was the social home robot before the term existed: a swiveling, dancing tabletop character from MIT roboticist Cynthia Breazeal, crowdfunded to records in 2014 and shipped in late 2017 at $899. TIME put it on a Best Inventions cover. Owners loved him with an intensity that still shapes the category.
The business failed. Jibo Inc. sold its assets in 2018; in March 2019 the robot delivered its own death announcement to owners, telling them the servers would shut down and thanking them for the time together, one of the most quietly devastating moments in consumer technology. NTT Data acquired the assets for healthcare and education experiments that never returned Jibo to consumers.
Every profile on this site records account requirements and cloud dependencies because of what Jibo taught: a companion that lives on someone else's servers can be discontinued out from under the people who love it.
Delivery evidence
Announcement is not arrival.
Owner verified
Thousands of units shipped 2017-2018 before shutdown
Capability ledger
What has actually been shown?
2 material claims are separated by evidence setting and human involvement. The strongest recorded signal is Owner verified; it does not automatically transfer to every row.
entertainment
Dances, jokes, photos
Owner verifiedVerified March 2019
- Control mode
- Autonomous
- Human intervention
- None
Hardware record.
- Height
- 28 cm
- Weight
- 2.7 kg
- Locomotion
- Stationary; three-axis full-body swivel dance
- Payload
- None
- Runtime
- Mains powered
- Charging
- Mains
- Top speed
- Not applicable
- Degrees of freedom
- 3-axis body
- Hands
- None
- Face / expression
- Round screen with animated eye
- Sensors
- Cameras with face recognition, microphone array, touch
Software record.
- AI platform
- Jibo cloud AI (decommissioned)
- Voice
- Conversational for its era; wake word 'Hey Jibo'
- Languages
- English
- Visual recognition
- Face recognition of family members
- Memory
- Recognized and greeted household members
- Processing
- Cloud dependent (fatally)
- Autonomous abilities
- Autonomous social behaviors
- Teleoperation
- None
- Software updates
- Ended 2019
- Developer access
- SDK existed briefly
Who can see, hear, or take control?
- Recording storage
- Cloud processed (service defunct)
- Remote operation possible
- No documented remote operation
- Teleoperation disclosure
- Not applicable
- Camera / microphone controls
- Power off
- Data deletion
- Service closure erased the question
- Account required
- Yes, and that was the problem
- Emergency stop
- Not applicable
- Children and pets
- Family-safe tabletop device
- Security updates
- Ended 2019
Lifecycle record
Status history.
- Preorder
Record-breaking Indiegogo campaign
- Limited delivery
Units ship to backers and buyers at $899
- Discontinued
Servers shut down; Jibo announces his own farewell
Source register
1 linked source.
These sources support the research record as a whole. Unlike the curated dossiers, this imported record does not yet map every claim to a stable source ID.