Kuri

A simple mobile robot with a black wheeled bottom, white middle, and white head with two black circles for eyes. A blue light glows on its chest.
The color of Kuri's chest light indicates the robots mood. Photo: Mayfield Robotics

Kuri is a home robot designed to interact with you and your family and capture clips of your day. It has an expressive personality and its own unique robot language. Beep!

Creator

Mayfield Robotics

Year
2017
Country
United States 🇺🇸
Categories
Features
How Kuri works. Video: IEEE Spectrum

More videos

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Appearance

Neutral

Did you know?

Kuri loves to dance to music, and has a chest light that illuminates with the beat.

The robot is facing a family of three who wear costumes.
Kuri captures 5-second videos of your life. Photo: Mayfield Robotics

History

Mayfield Robotics, a Bosch-backed startup, announced Kuri in 2017. Designed as a friendly home companion, and priced at US $700, Kuri came with a built-in camera, microphones, speakers, and touch sensors. It also featured a laser-based sensor array for obstacle detection, localization, and navigation. The company had an experienced team of engineers who paid special attention to human-robot interaction. While they gave Kuri speech recognition, the robot didn't talk back, instead relying on a variety of chirps, beeps, and bloop noises and its expressive head and eyes to communicate. Despite initial excitement, Mayfield Robotics announced in 2018 that it would cease Kuri's manufacturing and refund customers who had pre-ordered the robot. In a statement, the company said that "after extensive review, there was not a business fit within Bosch to support and scale our business." The decision came as the market saw social home robots struggling to establish their value and functionality when compared to more affordable digital assistants.

Scenes from videos are seen on a phone app.
You can favorite moments filmed in the software to teach Kuri what you want captured. Photo: Mayfield Robotics
Side view of the robot shows it at its charging station.
Time to nap and charge! Photo: Mayfield Robotics

Specs

Overview

Autonomous navigation, HD video recording, dual speakers for play from audio library, four-microphone array for voice detection, dancing skills.

Status

Discontinued

Year

2017

Website
Width
30 cm
Height
50 cm
Weight
6 kg
Sensors

1080p HD camera. Laser sensor for mapping, localization, and autonomous navigation. Capacitive touch sensors. Four-microphone array.

Cost
$899