Indiegogo alum, Jibo, Inc. recently revealed, despite previous claims, it would be able to deliver its family robot overseas, it will not able to ship abroad after all. The startup will only be sending the highly anticipated robot to backers in the U.S. and Canada.
The family robot is supposed to help bring technology to life with personal and emotive engagement. Unlike the home gadgets and other tech, Jibo is looking to fit in more like one of the family. The robot raised a total of $3,711,958 through the global crowdfunding platform.
Features of Jibo are the following:
- Sight: Two hi-res cameras recognize and track faces, capture photos, and enable immersive video calling.
- Hearing: 360 microphones and natural language processing let you talk to Jibo from anywhere in the room.
- Learn: Artificial intelligence algorithms learn your preference to adapt and fit into your life.
- Help: Like a personal assistant, Jibo proactively helps you, to make everyday tasks simpler and easier.
- Speaks: Hand-free reminders and messages, so you’ll never forget and can always be in touch.
- Relate: Communicates and expresses using natural social and emotive cues so you understand each other better.
While sharing details about the delivery situation, Jibo team stated at the time of Indiegogo campaign, they would be able to deliver the robot to English speakers throughout the world. Unfortunately, they learned operating services from the U.S. notably creates performance latency issues, which includes voice-recognition perspective. They also revealed:
“Additionally, given rapidly changing consumer-privacy laws, remote servers in the US providing services and content to other countries have been subject to extensive privacy regulation and legislation in many non-US countries, creating further barriers to providing you with the full Jibo experience you expect and deserve. The solution we believe is best is to provide full refunds to our international early supporters until we can release a fully localized Jibo for your country. For example, a Jibo who speaks and understands Japanese with servers located in Japan, or a German-speaking and understanding Jibo built for Germany, with servers located in Germany.”
Responding to why they didn’t explain these details sooner, the Jibo team commented:
“This was not an easy decision, and before reaching out to you, we needed time to assess our current program and ensure we had exhausted every avenue possible for delivering a successful Jibo experience to markets outside of the US and Canada.”
The team did note they are committed to their international supporters and are planning to expand in some of the international markets in late 2017. They are offering a refund to those in those countries. Those who are interested in receive the refund must submit a request by September 9th.
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