Kuri: a home robot built without a screen or a human voice, cancelled before launch

A robot that answers with eyes and sounds, not words

Kuri was a home robot from Mayfield Robotics, part of Bosch’s start-up platform. Preorders opened in January 2017 at $699. About 50 cm tall, it had a camera, four microphones, a laser sensor and touch sensors, but no screen. CEO Mike Beebe said: “We decided that we didn’t want to include a screen or a human voice.” Rather than pretend to hold a conversation, it responded only with its eyes and sounds.

Production stopped before delivery

In July 2018 Mayfield said it was stopping production and refunding deposits because Bosch had judged Kuri was not a business fit. In August it said it would close at the end of October. Reports disagree on whether units already made would ship or had been shipping since late 2017, so how many reached customers is unknown. On closing, the company published its design documentation on GitHub.

Compared with cheaper voice assistants

Reporting the cancellation, IEEE Spectrum’s Evan Ackerman noted that social home robots struggled to show their value against cheaper voice assistants. Jibo faced the same comparison with smart speakers at the time.

Design that lowered expectations could not save the business

Leaving out a screen and a human voice lowered expectations from the start, much as the silent PARO does. But whether Kuri launched was decided not by its design but by its parent company’s business judgement. The published documentation remains for researchers and developers.

Is a cheaper device already doing what this robot does?

What we haven’t confirmed

• How many units actually reached customers
• The event and year of its first showing, and the basis for the $899 figure
• Whether the app and cloud kept working after the company closed