ELIZA exposes the pull of simulated understanding
Joseph Weizenbaum publishes ELIZA in Communications of the ACM. Users read empathy into a pattern-matching conversation program, establishing an enduring caution for artificial companionship.
History / 05A history
A history
of company.
Companion robotics is not one straight march toward a humanoid. It is a series of experiments in touch, movement, attention, care, personality, and service dependence.
1966–202662 sourced eventsPrecision preserved
Dates are shown only as precisely as the cited record supports. Launches, cancellations, support failures, and archival models remain together because ownership history includes what stopped working as well as what shipped.
1966–1999
The ideas and care loops that made artificial companionship legible
The uncanny valley enters robotics
Masahiro Mori publishes the uncanny-valley hypothesis, giving designers language for the discomfort that can appear as robots approach—but do not fully achieve—human likeness.
Tamagotchi turns care into a mass-market interaction
Bandai releases Tamagotchi in Japan. The pocket creature makes feeding, attention, growth, and loss into a daily relationship loop without a physical robot body.
Furby makes expressive animatronics social
Tiger Electronics launches Furby. Its speech progression and animated face create a powerful illusion of learning—strong enough to prompt a widely reported US intelligence-agency ban.
Sony launches the first consumer AIBO
Sony launches the ERS-110 in Japan at ¥250,000. The first 3,000 units sell out online in about 20 minutes, demonstrating demand for an autonomous consumer robot pet.
2004–2009
Therapeutic recognition, ambitious robot pets, and the first support shock
PARO moves from research into care settings
AIST commercializes the therapeutic seal robot after development beginning in 1993, initially leasing it to elder-care facilities in Japan.
Sony ends the first AIBO era
Sony announces that AIBO will be discontinued during a corporate restructuring. The decision becomes an early warning that a companion robot's useful life depends on maker support.
Pleo ships as a 'designer life form'
Ugobe's expressive dinosaur reaches customers at $349 after a year of delays, extending the robot-pet idea beyond familiar cats and dogs.
PARO receives US therapeutic-device recognition
PARO is registered with the US Food and Drug Administration as a neurological therapeutic device, a significant regulatory milestone for socially assistive robotics.
2014–2017
The social-robot boom moves from demonstrations to homes—and meets delays
SoftBank and Aldebaran unveil Pepper
Pepper is presented as a personal robot able to read emotional cues. The claim is the maker's framing, but the launch puts social interaction at the center of a large humanoid platform.
Jibo's crowdfunding campaign takes off
Cynthia Breazeal's tabletop social robot raises more than $356,000 on its first Indiegogo day and ultimately about $3.6 million, reflecting intense interest in an expressive home companion.
Pepper goes on sale to consumers in Japan
SoftBank opens consumer sales at ¥198,000 plus 36 months of service fees, making ongoing subscriptions part of the ownership model.
Joy for All brings animatronic pets to older adults
Hasbro introduces the $99.99 Companion Pet Cat as its first product aimed at seniors, favoring familiar touch and low-maintenance comfort over autonomous navigation.
Anki's Cozmo starts shipping
The $180 palm-sized robot combines computer vision, a mobile app, and character animation inspired by film production.
Kuri debuts at CES
Mayfield Robotics opens $699 preorders for a small mobile home robot backed by Bosch, pairing autonomous movement with cameras, sound, and an expressive face.
ElliQ emerges as an active-aging companion
Intuition Robotics reveals a proactive companion for older adults, beginning a five-year path through pilots and trials before commercial release.
Jibo finally reaches customers
The $899 social robot ships roughly two years late, entering a home-assistant market that changed substantially during its delay.
Sony announces the revived aibo
After a 12-year hiatus, Sony reveals the ERS-1000 at ¥198,000 with a required cloud plan, reopening the AIBO lineage around connected personality and memory.
2018–2019
Connected personalities return as cloud dependence becomes impossible to ignore
The ERS-1000 goes on sale in Japan
Sony's new aibo reaches customers and the first batch sells out in about 30 minutes.
Kuri is cancelled before shipping
Mayfield Robotics refunds deposits and later closes operations, making Kuri a prominent example of preorder and company-continuity risk.
Sony announces aibo's US debut
The limited $2,899 First Litter Edition follows reported sales of 20,000 units in Japan.
Anki's Vector reaches retail
The $249 always-on robot moves more character and voice behavior into a connected service, later becoming a defining case study in cloud dependence.
GROOVE X unveils LOVOT
The company presents a warm, mobile companion intentionally designed to perform no useful work and instead to invite care and affection.
Jibo announces its own server shutdown
Robots deliver a farewell message and dance as service closure approaches, turning the end of a cloud-dependent social robot into a public experience of product loss.
Anki shuts down
The well-funded consumer-robot company closes after a financing deal collapses, leaving Cozmo and Vector owners dependent on the fate of its assets and services.
LOVOT general sales open in Japan
The Solo model is offered at ¥299,800 plus a monthly care plan, making service cost a central part of ownership.
Digital Dream Labs acquires Anki's assets
The education-technology company buys the Cozmo and Vector intellectual property at auction and promises to continue the products.
2020–2022
New bodies, local companions, care programs, and early generative-AI bridges
Samsung introduces Ballie
The rolling smart-home companion appears at CES without a price or release date, beginning a long sequence of redesigns and launch promises.
Embodied announces Moxie
The $1,499 child-development companion is presented for social-emotional learning, including work with autistic children.
Moflin wins a CES innovation award
Vanguard Industries' limbless furry companion, previously crowdfunded for more than $600,000, is named a CES 2021 Best of Innovation honoree in robotics.
Panasonic crowdfunds Nicobo
The intentionally dependent 'weak robot,' co-developed with Toyohashi University of Technology, sells its initial 320-unit allocation in 6.5 hours.
Romi goes on general sale in Japan
MIXI releases its small conversational robot at ¥44,800 plus a ¥980 monthly service fee.
Pepper production is reported stopped
Reporting citing Reuters says SoftBank halted production in 2020 after making roughly 27,000 units.
Amazon introduces Astro
The $999 invitation-only household robot combines autonomous movement, home monitoring, and an expressive screen while sitting near the boundary between utility and companionship.
Eilik launches on Kickstarter
Energize Lab's offline desktop companion substantially exceeds its funding goal, showing demand for small social robots without room-scale mobility.
ElliQ launches commercially in the US
After five years of pilots and trials, ElliQ becomes a subscription product at $249.99 plus $29.99 per month.
Sony opens the poiq research project
The experimental conversational buddy is developed with a group of paying participant-researchers rather than launched as a conventional retail product.
New York begins distributing ElliQ
The state Office for the Aging starts providing the robot to isolated older adults, moving companion robotics into a public-program deployment.
KEYi announces Loona
The expressive wheeled petbot launches through Kickstarter, where it raises more than $1.7 million before later adding generative-AI conversation features.
2023–2024
Language models arrive while public programs and service failures test the category
Nicobo reaches general sale
Panasonic opens general purchases in Japan at ¥60,500 plus a ¥1,100 monthly fee.
Romi adds a ChatGPT-powered mode
MIXI adds an Assistant Mode using ChatGPT, placing a large language model inside the service layer of a shipped companion robot.
Vector owners document a prolonged cloud outage
As Digital Dream Labs services falter, the owner community increasingly turns to wire-pod, a free replacement server, to preserve functionality.
New York publishes ElliQ program results
The state aging office reports a 95% reduction in loneliness among more than 800 users. The figure is program self-report data, not an independent clinical effect estimate.
Sony starts an aibo foster program
Donated aibo robots are refurbished and placed in care facilities, extending a consumer product into structured social-care settings.
Samsung redesigns Ballie
A projector-equipped version appears at CES 2024, again without a firm consumer release date.
GROOVE X announces LOVOT 3.0
The ¥577,500 generation introduces OLED eyes and upgraded sensing while retaining the warm, care-seeking design premise.
Amazon retires Astro for Business
The security-focused variant is discontinued seven months after launch, with deployed robots scheduled to stop functioning that September—a nearby warning about service-bound hardware.
Pennsylvania sues Digital Dream Labs
The state attorney general alleges that roughly 14,000 prepaid Cozmo and Vector orders worth more than $4 million were not fulfilled.
Casio launches Moflin in Japan
The furry AI pet reaches retail at ¥59,400 and sells out, translating the earlier crowdfunded concept into a Casio consumer product.
Embodied announces Moxie's shutdown
After a lead investor withdraws, the company says its cloud-driven child companion will lose service, forcing families to prepare children for the robot's end.
OpenMoxie offers a last-minute untethering path
Embodied announces code and an update intended to let owners run Moxie without the company cloud; the release follows in January 2025 before server closure.
2025–2026
Scale, stewardship, delayed launches, and formal healthcare coverage
Ropet joins the CES companion wave
The maker showcases its palm-sized emotional pet at CES and reports roughly 10,000 sales in its first six months.
Aldebaran files for bankruptcy
The maker of NAO and Pepper enters bankruptcy; Shenzhen-based Maxvision later acquires core robot assets.
Samsung and Google Cloud put Gemini in Ballie
The companies announce that Gemini will power Ballie and say the home companion is planned for consumer availability that summer.
Romi Lacatan reaches general availability
MIXI's new model adds camera vision, long-term memory, and GPT-4o assistance for the Japanese market.
Kanematsu invests to bring ElliQ to Japan
The investment supports Japanese-market expansion and brings Intuition Robotics' reported total equity funding to $85 million.
Moflin expands to the US and UK
Casio lists the companion at $429 in the United States and £369 in the United Kingdom.
Samsung is reported to have shelved Ballie
After repeated demonstrations and release promises, reporting says the household robot has been indefinitely shelved without shipping.
Washington authorizes Medicaid support for ElliQ
Companion-robot access enters formal US healthcare reimbursement through Washington State's Medicaid program.
Joy for All reports 750,000 adoptions
Ageless Innovation says its companion pets have passed 750,000 adoptions, evidence of the scale reached by simpler tactile companions for older adults.
Tombot funds Jennie's planned launch
Tombot closes a $7 million Series A3, reports more than 23,000 people on the waitlist, and targets a fall 2026 launch after years of development.
Sony announces the end of aibo sales in Japan
Japanese ERS-1000 sales will end when stock runs out, while Sony says US sales, support, and cloud memory plans will continue.