This robot just wants to help

Forget about robot friends. Robit wants to be your robot servant.

The new bot from the eponymous Robit officially launched its Indiegogo campaign on Wednesday, hoping to generate enough interest for a Holiday 2016 launch.

With its Jack Skellington-esque face, squat body and two big wheels (it has a tiny caster wheel in the back), the 13-inch tall, 3-pound Robit looks cute enough to be your friend, but company CEO Shlomo Schwarcz told me that’s not the intention.

When he and his brother, Elazar, starting asking people what they really wanted in a home robot, virtual everyone talked about it handling household tasks like the dishes and folding laundry. Robit can do neither of those things, but those wishes helped inform the kind of robot they ultimately built. “We made [a robot] that is very functional, that can actually help you,” Shlomo Schwarcz said. Read more...