People are afraid of robots. They're uncomfortable with the androids that look too much like humans and may even run screaming from the types which recently competed in the DARPA Robotics Challenge. But what consumers can accept is something cute.

Buddy, the new robot companion from Blue Frog Robotics which launched on Indiegogo on Thursday, follows that model.

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The 22-inch tall white robot features an integrated tablet that's also home to its adorable face. The Android-based, Intel Atom-based tablet (also the hub for Buddy's brains) sits in a rotatable head and can slide back and forth on its cone-shaped body. Buddy rolls around on three wheels— two large ones in the front and a caster-style wheel in the back).

Like Jibo — another friendly-faced family robot on Indiegogo — Buddy eschews arms and legs, which not only makes the robot easier to develop but a lot less scary for humans worried about an errant home robot reaching out or chasing them. The exception to this rule might be Softbank's Pepper, the emotional robot, which includes fully articulated arms and hands; it even has a real face, but also includes a tablet on its belly.

Buddy Robot has three wheels, a tablet face, cameras (above the face) and sensors (between the two front wheels). Image: Blue Frog Robotics

Buddy is stuffed with features. It can speak and hear, sense its environment and navigate a room. He can also recognize faces, play games with children, watch over your home, manage your calendar and set alarms, and detect smoke and fire.

In addition, Buddy is a telepresence robot that will even let you remotely see through its built-in camera, act as a smart home companion and according to Blue Frog Robotics, connect to and control other smart home devices. He'll let you make Skype calls and deliver messages sent to it via a Buddy app, too.

For many of these tasks, Blue Frog Robotics developed a series a super-cute expressions — although I question the one that shows Buddy looking like's asleep during guard duty — which appear on the 1280x800 screen. All of this should help the little robot become a more accepted companion in the home. Blue Frog estimates the robot will have 8 to 10 hours of battery life.

Buddy has a cute, animated face. Here the robot appears to be half asleep during guard duty. Image: Blue Frog Robotics

Like other startup robots, Buddy will be open source and the company will offer an SDK so developers can add and remove applications and develop new ones for the companion bot.

BlueFrog Robotics COO Franck de Visme told Mashable it is accessible to developers based on commonly-used tools like C++, C# and JavaScript. "Buddy will be 80% open source at the beginning and then later on 100%," he wrote in an email, adding that the accessibility relates to pricing, too (Buddy starts at $749).

Blue Frog Robotics plans to deliver Buddy in May of 2016, something that seems like a distinct possibility now that Buddy's Indiegogo campaign blew through its $100,000 goal in a matter of hours. In the campaign, Buddy was listed for $649 for the Classic Edition and Toolkit. Meanwhile, a developer’s edition (arriving in December of this year) sold for $599 on the campaign ($749 retail).

Buddy looks promising, but then so does Jibo, which recently launched its second Indiegogo campaign. The questions remain, though, which smiley-faced robot will make it to market first and will real humans embrace them?