Can this cute robot from Asia win the hearts of American parents?

Miko 2 uses dialogue to engage young children, but the competition is fierce.

Over the past few years, a robot named Miko 2 has attracted a cult following in Asia. Now, the robot's creators are bringing it to the U.S. market.

This robot has an absolute advantage in the $150 billion educational toy market and has attracted a large number of robot developers, making competition increasingly fierce. Mainstream companies like Lego Mindstorms are now competing with upstarts like Sphero. Sphero recently launched a new programmable rover toy and swallowed up rival littleBits in an attempt to become the dominant player in educational robotics.

Miko 2 is the brainchild of a member of the Advanced Consumer Robotics Innovation Lab named Miko. The laboratory is a gathering place for educators, engineers and psychologists from around the world. “As a father, Miko’s mission is near and dear to my heart. We want to see kids learn and grow with our products and are excited to bring it to North American families, especially with the interest and support from people in Asia Finally,” said CEO Sini Vaswani. Vaswani co-founded Miko in 2015 along with Prashant Iyengar and Chintan Raikar.

Compared with many programmable robots on the market that focus on scientific research, the toy robot has one advantage: it can talk. Thanks to advanced computer vision recognition technology, it can also remember the child's appearance and remember the registered faces, objects, and environments. The rolling robot understands spoken commands and can engage in conversations with children to initiate learning.

The robot also has the ability to make conference calls and set reminders, making it a bit like a personal assistant, but only for kids. In fact, this robot has some similarities to Jibo. Jibo, a personal robot designed for adults, was a hit with critics but ultimately failed to spark consumer interest.

At $299, developers will have an uphill battle to break into the U.S. market, although the technology does look promising.

“We have four children in our family, ranging in age from 6 to 12 years old. Miko teaches each of them something new and age-appropriate. Miko makes learning and playing fun for them, and during this time I Make sure they don’t spend their free time watching TV or playing on their phones,” says Pooja Jain, a mother of four in India.

Author: Greg Nichols

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