A social robot. Sounds interesting right? A concept that our society has imagined and reimagined for decades, from The Jetsons to sci-fi movies. A form of technology that truly interacts with humans and even caters to their needs. Well, thanks to Dr. Cynthia Breazeal and her team, it may finally be real. The robotics researcher and professor at the MIT Media Lab has been dreaming of this for a long time.

This is Jibo. It stands just under a foot tall and it can see, hear, speak, learn, help and relate to you and your loved ones. It can take pictures, track faces, recognize where sound is coming from and — ideally — help organize and simplify your life. The family friendly robot project was introduced earlier this year via crowd funding site Indiegogo. Braezeal’s team reached their $100,000 goal in just 4 hours, and reached $1M in 7 days. Safe to say, Jibo is coming.

Jibo can become your family’s personal photographer; using natural cues like movement, speech, and smile detection to know when someone’s posing for a picture. Plus, he recognizes you and each member of your household, to deliver the right messages to the right people at the right time & place. The skill set is truly impressive, plus there’s plenty more possibilities on the horizon for developers who want to add to Jibo’s functionality.

“We are trying to court people who create mobile apps and games to say, ‘hey, look, imagine creating content and applications for technology that actually feels alive,'” Breazeal told the Huffington Post earlier this year.

Design-wise, the little bot is pretty cool looking. Its midsection and “head” can rotate and turn, which help it distinguish between “awake” and “asleep.” Even in its prototype stage, Jibo dances, introduces itself, listens to voice commands and displays images on its 5.7 inch touchscreen LCD display. Jibo already has a telepresence app too, similar to Skype except you can tap on people’s faces to rotate focus to them. This gives the app the human element of being able to look around the room and change the focus of your camera. Breazeal plans to incorporate Bluetooth and a cloud-based update system to make things even more seamless for Jibo users.

With over $2 million now raised, Jibo is definitely on the way to homes, with their site claiming a ship date around April 2016. Check out the video below to see how Jibo works in real scenarios. Head to the Jibo site to learn more.

