Social and companion robots

Interaction-first robots for reception, care and retail

Social robots are judged on interaction design, not locomotion. Speech handling in noisy rooms, escalation to a human and privacy posture are the deciding factors in most procurements.

Platforms in this category

Engineered Arts

Ameca

Ameca is a full-sized humanoid robot designed as a platform for developing and testing human-robot interaction and artificial intelligence. Its neutral-gender appearance and highly expressive face enable realistic communication. The robot operates on the Tritium software system and supports multilingual natural-language interactions.

Price on application

Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories (ATR)

Erica

This autonomous android is a dedicated research tool for developing sophisticated human-robot interaction. It integrates multimodal sensing with advanced speech, facial expressions, and gestures to achieve natural conversation. Erica serves as a platform to further research into social robotics applications.

Price on application

USTC

Jia Jia

Developed by USTC, Jia Jia is a human-proportioned, silicone-skinned robot primarily for research. It demonstrates capabilities in spoken dialogue, facial expressions, and autonomous navigation. The platform supports cloud services and operates in both Mandarin Chinese and English.

Price on application

NTU Singapore

Nadine

Nadine is a stationary social humanoid robot designed for lifelike face-to-face interaction, featuring realistic skin, hair, and articulated hands. It can engage in autonomous multilingual conversations, identify individuals, and recall past interactions, while also simulating emotions through facial expressions and gestures.

Price on application

Aldebaran

Nao

Nao is a small, autonomous bipedal robot engineered for natural interaction across various settings, including education and care. It combines expressive movement with a comprehensive sensor suite for perception and communication, supporting multilingual speech and vision capabilities.

$16,990

SoftBank Robotics

Pepper

This wheeled humanoid robot was engineered to interact with people through conversation and a chest-mounted display. It could perceive surroundings and respond to human emotion using its integrated cameras and sensors, suitable for customer-facing environments. Pepper was previously deployed across sectors like retail, hospitality, and education.

Historic list price withdrawn

Hanson Robotics

Sophia

Sophia is a human-like social robot designed for artificial intelligence research, human-robot interaction studies, and public engagement. This platform combines realistic facial expressions with advanced conversational AI and computer vision, rather than being a mass-market product.

Price on application