MarsCat: a robot cat that raised ten times its goal and now shows as discontinued

A cat for the home from a collaborative-robot company

MarsCat is a robot cat made by China’s Elephant Robotics. The company was founded in 2016 and made collaborative robots that work alongside people in factories, and MarsCat was its first consumer product. It went on Kickstarter on 26 December 2019. It has sixteen motorized joints, and a nose camera, six touch sensors and a microphone let it react to touch and voice. How often an owner pets and talks to it shifts six personality traits, such as enthusiastic versus aloof. It runs on a Raspberry Pi and ships with an open SDK, which the company pitched for education and research. Co-founder Joey Song said the aim was a robot that not only looks like a real cat but behaves like one. Backer prices were $649–699 and the planned retail price was reported as about $1,000 to $1,299 (varies by source). TechCrunch compared it with Sony’s $2,899 aibo.

Shipping slips with COVID-19, mass production in 2022

The campaign passed 200% of its goal in two days and reached 1,000% by February 2020. The amount raised and the number of backers were not confirmed. According to a team update of 3 March 2020, Chinese factories shut in February and reopened below full capacity, which pushed beta production from March to early April. Redesigning a leg joint pushed the mold schedule back further. The mold factory was short of labor and had switched to making masks, so assembly parts were due in early to mid-August. The team said it could not find a replacement factory with acceptable cost and quality. Shipping moved to September 2020. In March 2022 Elephant Robotics said MarsCat had moved into mass production after two years of development. No sales figures have been published since. A CES 2025 article gave no price or sales either. The global official store now shows $1,199 (reference price $1,399) but no stock, with a notice that the product has been discontinued.

Praise for movement, complaints about conversation and support

Reactions before delivery were friendly. Inverse said it does not look much like a real cat and moves in jerky bursts, yet found it charming, and it noted the company’s statement that user data stays on the device. Personal Robots gave it 3.65 overall (quality 3.5, AI 4.5, fun 3.0, each out of 5) and listed price and a battery lasting only a few hours as drawbacks.

Records after delivery are few, and many of them are negative. A buyer featured on a blog in February 2023 said the MarsCat they bought in a holiday sale walked backwards, ignored voice commands and restarted about every two minutes. Bluetooth stayed connected for only a few seconds. The 90-day warranty runs from the order date, at least three weeks of it passed without replies from the company, and the buyer would have to pay $200–400 to ship it back. The buyer called it a $2,000 doorstop. This is one person’s account and cannot be generalized. A comparison page posted in October 2025 by the maker of a rival, Mia, summarized that users find ear and tail movement lifelike, while voice interaction is limited, movement can look stiff and the price is high. The user comments it quotes were not verified.

A cheaper price than aibo, with support as the test

TechCrunch and Inverse both stressed that MarsCat costs less than aibo. The campaign passed its goal quickly, but the records found afterward cluster around delays and after-sales support. Shipping was tied to one mold factory’s labor shortage and order backlog, and the team found no replacement. If the company’s statement about on-device data holds, MarsCat has little risk of losing function when a server is switched off, as Jibo did. But no public material says what happens to repairs and parts after the discontinuation.

If the maker marks it discontinued, how many more years can this cat run on its open SDK and on-device storage alone?

What we haven’t confirmed

• When shipping actually began, how many units sold, and the final Kickstarter total and backer count
• When and why it was discontinued, and whether other regional stores still sell it
• Official size and weight
• The only design intent found was the maker’s own statement; no designer interview or design award turned up