The AI companion robot that raised over one million through crowdfunding had its exhibition booth crowded with foreigners. | HardcoreTech Direct at CES.

Author | Ye Danxuan

Editor | Yuan Silai

Have you ever dreamed of having a guardian robot like Baymax from "Big Hero 6"?

In the movie, Baymax's chubby and cute appearance, healing expressions, and loyal character of unconditionally protecting its owner have captured the hearts of many movie fans.

Compared with the omniscient and omnipotent, sleek robots in early science fiction movies that seemed like intelligent tools from a higher dimension, Baymax appears somewhat clumsy: once it encounters a ball, it will start playing the ball-picking game endlessly; it can never run fast and will get stuck when passing through narrow places. However, when its owner is feeling down, it can give hugs, encouragement, and comfort, becoming the owner's closest friend.

At that time, such a cute and slightly clumsy robot, while subverting people's stereotypical impression of robots as cold and highly capable, also raised a challenging idea: Can robots be friends who accompany humans instead of just being tools?

With the technological development of large models and embodied intelligence, entrepreneurs are bringing this idea into reality.

At the ongoing CES (Consumer Electronics Show) 2025, such a product has emerged. Founded in 2022, "Mengyou Intelligence" has released its first artificial intelligence robotic pet, Ropet, which can endow the robot with a plush appearance the ability to recognize human actions and emotions, and to learn and respond over the long term based on visual, sound sensors, and AI technology.

Ropet has a round and plush appearance, with short arms extending from both sides of its body, and the largest part of its face is a pair of big eyes. When you stroke its fluffy body, it looks at you with a clear and innocent gaze, and the temperature of around 37 degrees can make users momentarily stunned: This seems like a real little life.

As of now, on Kickstarter, the world's largest crowdfunding platform, Ropet has raised approximately $202,000, exceeding its initial fundraising target by 150 times, and more than 900 units have been sold as of the publication of this article.

01 Perceptual Interaction Enables Companionship and Growth

Behind the wave of urbanization is the rapidly growing population of people living alone and the aging group. Loneliness will become one of the most widespread topics of this generation.

The Ropet team observed that against the backdrop of the global economic downturn, the problem of survival pressure is prominent, bulk consumption is shrinking, while consumption that meets the emotional companionship needs is showing a contrarian growth. According to Beige Consulting, the global companion robot market size was 75 billion yuan in 2023, and it is expected to reach 304.3 billion yuan in 2029, with a CAGR of 25.56% from 2024 to 2029, showing a rapid growth trend.

But Ropet did not define the product as a companion robot from the beginning, but as an intelligent pet with a companion function.

Ropet proposes that intelligent pets do not mechanically replace traditional real pets such as cats and dogs, but start from the perspective of pets, upgrading the "virtual pet" nurturing game form to a highly mimetic and biologically interactive physical hardware. In popular terms, it combines the interactive experience of virtual world electronic pets with the learning, interaction, and actual companionship ability of real pets, and presents it through its cute and fluffy appearance.

Ropet simulates a real living being to the greatest extent, with body temperature and reactions such as hunger. When it is hungry, it will make a sound of a rumbling stomach, and the user needs to place real foods such as bananas and apples in front of it. After Ropet sees them, it will learn and remember. Later, when it sees bananas again, a banana icon will appear in its eyes, and it will also make a chewing sound.

Ropet at the CES booth

During the interaction, Ropet will recognize the user's emotions and respond accordingly. For example, when the user shows a bored expression, it will look at you with wide eyes and send a signal asking for a hug. He Jiabin, the founder of Mengyou Intelligence, gave an example to Hardcore. People who keep cats know that when you are under great pressure, your cat jumps onto your lap, and when you stroke it a few times, your mood will calm down. The same applies to this function of Ropet. When the user touches it or picks it up, they will clearly feel its temperature, "feeling that it is alive."

Not only that, Ropet will also continuously improve the intimacy and growth value as the interaction deepens, and learn the owner's facial expressions and habits. He Jiabin introduced to Hardcore that when the user spends a certain amount of time with Ropet, the interaction requests and feedback it sends to the owner and others are different. "For example, when it is in a bad mood, the effect and reaction when you touch it and when someone else touches it are completely different."

In order to achieve these functions, the team integrated a multimodal perception system inside Ropet. The visual and auditory sensors are used to capture the user's facial expressions and analyze the user's voice and tone changes, respectively, and the temperature sensor on the body surface will also sense and record the user's body temperature in different states.

Of course, an AI hardware with only data collection capabilities cannot bring a sense of companionship. How to make Ropet understand this data and highly simulate a real living being to give users a "living" feedback is the key for intelligent pets to retain users.

The team believes that a "living" intelligent pet not only needs a behavior pattern unique to the category, but also needs a certain "sociality", that is, to generate a special way of getting along that belongs only to a certain Ropet and its owner in the interaction.

Therefore, after collecting interaction data in the visual, auditory, and tactile dimensions through sensors, the built-in edge-side model of Ropet will learn and perform decision logic design through offline edge-side computing. Through continuous training and learning, each Ropet will develop its own behavioral characteristics and way of getting along.

The local edge-side model is equivalent to Ropet's attention system and biological brain. "It is different from the stereotyped programming of traditional interactive toys. After implanting a small brain for the robot, it will produce many growth possibilities that you would not expect, which is exactly in line with the meaning of life of a cute pet." He Jiabin told Hardcore. For example, if it is often in a low battery state, then Ropet may have emotions and even suddenly be in a bad mood during the interaction. By combining the large model and the small edge-side model, breaking through the stereotyped programming of traditional AI toys, when each Ropet makes a similar micro-feedback is the result of the model learning from the user's interaction pattern and is not controlled by the team.

Hardcore learned that currently, Ropet has nearly 800 users on the overseas crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, and the first batch of products is expected to be delivered in March this year.

02 "Weak Companionship" Focusing on Women's Needs

An interesting data is that on the Kickstarter platform, where men are in the majority, the proportion of women among the transaction users of Ropet exceeds 70%. Among them, the proportion of women users who have never used Kickstarter is more than 65%.

This is in line with the market insight of the Ropet team. Currently, in the domestic market, companion robots are mainly divided into two categories: one is functional robot products for children, such as companion robots with educational and tutoring functions; the other is adult-oriented robots, which are more designed to meet the needs of men in product design, appearing in the form of wheels or humanoid shapes.

He Jiabin told Hardcore that the team believes that the product design of domestic companion robots still focuses on the "visible needs" of users, but companionship itself is an "invisible need". Among them, women have a relatively stronger demand for emotional companionship, but there has not yet been a companion robot product that targets women's needs.

Based on this, the team's understanding and communication of the concept of "companionship" is quite important. In Japan, where the companion robot culture is the most popular, the team found the source of inspiration: Weak companionship is the core demand for emotional value for most people.

"The current understanding of AI companionship on the market simply equates chatting with companionship in a rough and simple way." He Jiabin said, but companionship is often a silent moment, "For example, when you are in a low mood, you suddenly see the green plants on your desktop that you have taken good care of, or the kitten senses your depressed expression and comes over and lies quietly next to the computer."

Therefore, the team hopes to convey their understanding of companionship through the hardware side.

The core team of Mengyou Intelligence comes from Stanford University as well as domestic software and hardware giants such as ByteDance, Baidu, Alibaba, Xiaomi, and NIO. The founder, He Jiabin, has ten years of experience in intelligent hardware, and the landing products include Baidu Eye glasses, Dubike smart bicycle, Luka picture book reading robot, and Pico VR glasses.

In the product research and development of intelligent hardware, He Jiabin found that traditional embodied intelligent robots usually simulate a real human body shape, with designs of limbs or wheels, which can move nimbly and even perform "cool" actions such as dancing and rolling.

In contrast, the majority of the living scenes of the 30-generation female white-collar group that Ropet focuses on are the office and the home. There are usually many decorations on the desktop, and an overly agile moving function becomes a burden. At the same time, Ropet's positioning as an intelligent pet determines that it does not need to do functional work such as path planning, obstacle avoidance, and grasping through the limbs, but rather makes the user feel the need and be needed through the feedback of expressions and micro-actions.

"It doesn't need to run around or talk a lot. It just needs to quietly look at you on the desktop. When you or it is feeling down, hug it and stroke it. Its survival motivation is to accompany the owner." He Jiabin said.

The team believes that it is an advantageous period to enter the companion robot field from the female emotional track. On the one hand, the technological breakthroughs of large models and embodied intelligence make it possible for the hardware to perceive and learn the user's emotions to a greater extent, and give feedback to the user through precise decision-making and execution.

On the other hand, the domestic has a strong supply chain advantage in hardware manufacturing, which can further lower the price of companion robots on the market and conduct more extensive market education.

In the future, Mengyou Intelligence will further iterate the software based on hardware feedback, insight into user needs, and expand product gameplay. Ropet will participate in the Nuremberg Global Toy Fair in Germany at the end of this month and expand the European market.