Colin Angle, co-founder of iRobot and the engineer behind the Roomba, has publicly unveiled his new company Familiar Machines & Magic and its debut product, a companion robot codenamed Ami. The announcement was made at the Wall Street Journal’s The Future of Everything event this week. A commercial launch is not expected until 2027 at the earliest, and pricing has not been disclosed.
4/ More to come. For now → https://t.co/RJClYHvIkN pic.twitter.com/6dcvEl3Skm
— Familiar Machines & Magic (@FamiliarMxM) May 4, 2026
Ami is a four-legged robot with a visual design that sits between a dog and a bear. It has 23 degrees of freedom, enabling movement across its head, ears, and eyes. It cannot grasp objects or climb stairs. That limited physical capability is deliberate – Ami is not designed to be useful in the conventional sense. It is designed to be present.
What Ami Does
The robot uses on-device generative AI to learn about its owner over time and respond to emotional cues – adjusting its behavior based on what it observes through onboard cameras and microphones. It does not speak. Instead it produces purring sounds and other pet-like audio, reinforcing the companion animal frame rather than a functional assistant one.
The coat is touch-sensitive, designed to respond to petting. All processing runs locally; the robot does not require an internet connection and does not stream audio or video externally – a privacy consideration that Familiar Machines & Magic is positioning as a feature for a device intended to operate continuously in private domestic spaces.
“The next era of robotics is not just about dexterity or humanoid form – it’s about machines that can build and sustain human connection,” Angle said in a statement.
The Team and the Market Context
Familiar Machines & Magic draws on staff with backgrounds at Disney Research, MIT, Amazon, Boston Dynamics, Bose, and Sonos – a combination that reflects the product’s intersection of robotics engineering, consumer electronics, and experiential design.
Ami enters a small but growing category of companion robots targeting loneliness, particularly among elderly users. Companies including ElliQ and Abi are developing AI-powered companions for elder care applications, and the category has attracted increasing attention as aging demographics in developed markets create sustained demand for non-pharmaceutical interventions in social isolation.
The commercial risk for Ami is the same one that has historically constrained companion robot products: consumer willingness to pay for something that performs no measurable task. Angle’s track record with the Roomba – a product that succeeded by solving a specific, repeatable domestic problem – makes Familiar Machines & Magic’s pivot toward emotional utility a meaningful strategic departure. Whether the market for robot companionship has matured enough to support a premium consumer product will be the test the Ami launch faces when it arrives.
