The man who put 50 million robots into homes wants to do it again — but this time, it won’t clean your floors.
Colin Angle, co-founder of iRobot and inventor of the Roomba, just came out of stealth with his new company Familiar Machines & Magic. His first product is a 23-degree-of-freedom quadruped with a touch-sensitive coat of fake fur. It won’t vacuum. It’ll greet you at the door, follow you into the kitchen, and nudge you off the couch when you’ve been doomscrolling too long.
He’s calling it a Familiar. And his contrarian thesis: the entire humanoid robot arms race is fighting over only half the prize. The other $2.5 trillion of the physical AI market isn’t about doing work. It’s about emotional work — companionship, connection, presence.
“As soon as you bring people into the equation, it gets complicated. If I had a smart speaker that looked like a puck, I expect to be able to talk to it. But if you make it look humanoid, all bets are off.” — Colin Angle
I talked with Angle on TechFirst this week — full conversation, transcript, and video there. And my deeper take on what Familiar Machines is building and what it means for the robot market is on Forbes →