This cute robot pet will warm your heart and protect your home

She sneezes, scratches, and roams the home easily, and even investigates suspicious objects
Loukia Papadopoulos
Loona the pet robot.jpg
Loona the pet robot.

Indiegogo 

Have you ever considered a robotic pet? It can last forever and requires minimum maintenance. 

PetBot Loona, introduced by robotics company KEYi Technology at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) - 2023, is quite endearing. The company is currently raising funds for this project on Indiegogo (a platform to raise funds).

“Loona is a smart, intuitive, affectionate, and playful companion robot, designed for people and pets,” said a statement included in the media kit from the robot’s maker.

“When her humans arrive home, she goes quickly to welcome them. When they walk around, she follows. When she is pet, she expresses happiness.” 

But that’s not all she does. She sneezes, scratches, and roams the home easily, and even investigates suspicious objects. This robot also beatboxes, dances, and even poses for pictures.  

At just $449 USD, she is very affordable, especially considering she can stay with the family forever. 

Loona uses vision, listening, and haptic perception to engage with the world around her making her very responsive to her environment. 

Vision, listening, and haptic

Vision allows Loona to recognize up to 20 faces simultaneously, spot her human in a crowd, recognize human body posture, and be controlled through hand gestures.

Listening allows her to know where her human is thanks to sound source positioning, wake up when called with a special word, have semantic understanding, and respond to voice commands. 

Finally, haptic perception makes her able to sense touch and react accordingly via tactile sensors on the top of the head. 

Furthermore, she comes with a repertoire of over 700 rich robotic emotional actions that are expressed via her LCD screen face and movements in her legs and ears. 

“Loona leverages an emotional interaction model that makes her more like a creature who is able to understand her human and become familiar with their interaction habits," read the statement.

"She has a movement control system which, when combined with the kinematic model of robot control, makes her movement smoother and softer (like a pet).”  

Loona is also very playful. She can chase a laser pen, fetch a ball and interact with random objects. 

A security robot

But it’s not all just fun and games. Loona is equipped with a camera and a speaker for security purposes. When her humans are away, they can monitor their home through Loona's camera. 

“Through Lex and KVS based on AWS, Loona supports more security standards and compliance certifications than any other offering, including PCI-DSS, HIPAA/HITECH, FedRAMP, GDPR, FIPS 140-2, and NIST 800-171,” explained the media kit.

“Loona satisfies compliance requirements for virtually every regulatory agency around the globe. Meanwhile, Loona uses a data encryption chip to protect user data and user privacy at the hardware level.” 

Last but not least, Loona boasts two types of movement: agile and rapid four-wheeled movement and two-wheeled balanced more intelligent motion.