Robot pillows that suck, wave and relieve stress

Yukai Engineering Plush Toys Provide Emotional Touch

We’ve come a long way since the days of “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up”—a memorable advertising slogan that emerged three decades ago, when a small communication device was seen as a must-have gadget for isolated seniors to carry around in case they fell. Now, older people have cell phones, Alexa or smart watches, and a growing array of robotic companions, including furry ones that mimic wagging pet tails and stuffed animals that bite fingers.

Thanks to cheaper, faster and smaller processors, energy-efficient batteries, improvements in sensors and depth cameras, consumer robots are becoming more common.

Based in Tokyo Yukai Engineering wants to create a variety of them to “bring joy to people.” The name expresses this mission, as yukai means “fun” or “joy” in Japanese.

“I see robots as an interface that can warm our hearts and inspire us to action,” said Shunsuke Aoki, CEO of Yukai. “In the world I envision, our everyday, technology-saturated environment will be intelligent enough to decode the meaning of our behaviors and transform the information into digital cues that devices will respond to appropriately.

“This will make interactions between humans and machines so natural and fluid that communicating with machines will be like talking to humans or live animals.”

Yukai’s Products

Yukai has a line Products which include his Necomimi cat ears and also his Kokonatch social robots that sit alongside the human computer, complete with a VUI development kit, a set of robot education materials, and a physical computing toolkit for smartphones and tablets.

However, the company’s core product group consists of four robots:

The first one is BOCKOa communication robot that is essentially a smart speaker that allows families to easily stay in touch. For example, if there is an elderly family member who is not very good with smartphones or does not have WiFi, family members can leave messages for BOCCO, which the robot will then read aloud. All they have to do is press “send” and the robot will start playing the message to the family; to respond, the family member simply needs to press the “record” and “send” buttons on their robot to reply to the message. An app on the phone will automatically transcribe these responses into text format. BOCCO can also respond to greetings such as “I’m home!” or “I’m tired.”It can send users weather warnings and reminders, and can be connected to various smart devices to operate them remotely and receive notifications via the robot.

Designed for isolated seniors who are not comfortable using their phones or do not have access to Wi-Fi on their phones.

In addition, BOCCO has sensors that allow family members to monitor the activity of their loved ones and receive notifications when a family member returns home, or measure the temperature and humidity in specific rooms. BOCCO has three types of built-in sensors: a light intensity sensor, a vibration sensor, and a motion sensor, which allow it to accurately capture the surrounding conditions and return the best response.

Yukii’s second robot is Qoobo (shown above), a therapeutic robot that at first glance looks like a bizarre headless cat but is actually a pillow with a tail. The plush toy responds to the user’s touch, meaning that depending on how the user touches or pets Qoobo, it acts differently; for example, it gently waves when petted, but rocks playfully when rubbed. Sometimes it also wags to simply say “hi.”

Through trial and error, Yukai developed a mechanism that closely mimics the complex movements of the animal’s tail by observing the animal’s movements and designing a program to replicate them. Sales have been primarily in Japan, but the company has partners in Hong Kong, Thailand, China and Singapore, and its websites are poised to expand to the UK and US via Amazon.com.Yukai’s third robot is called Amagami Ham Ham (which is funny to say), a soft plush toy that mimics the way pets and babies gently bite your finger with their little teeth. Every time the robot bites, it does it differently, meaning sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly.

The company has a series of different Ham Ham robots depicting animals, including a cat, a panda, an otter and a bear.Yukai’s latest product, which the company launched at CES in 2023, is a robotic pillow with deep-breathing technology called Fufuly: developed in collaboration with researchers at the University of Tokyo, it mimics breathing movements to help users breathe. While deep breathing is a well-known method for promoting relaxation, it’s not something people can do without any training, so Fufuly helps users breathe deeply without any training.

It uses a well-known physiological phenomenon, which is the synchronization of breathing between people in close proximity. So, by simply hugging Fululy, the user’s body will automatically synchronize its breathing in sync with the robot, putting it in a more relaxed state.

Application

People are increasingly using devices: young people around the world are spending more and more time in front of screens increased by 52%about 84 extra minutes per day between 2020 and 2022. But these devices don’t make us happier; in fact, people are more lonely than everwith more than half of Americans reporting feel lonely consistently.

Yukai is creating devices that it hopes can be smartphones while also helping people feel lonely and less stressed: BOCCA devices can help families talk to each other and check in on each other, while Qoobo and Amagami Ham Ham help users feel less stressed by reproducing what it’s like to have a pet. And its latest device, Fufuly, teaches users breathing techniques to help them relax.

As Aoki wrote, “I see robots as the embodiment of the presence that IoT networks can create. I believe robots will replace smartphone screens as the interface of choice for the next generation. We hope to develop robots that will be adopted as the global standard interface.”

(This profile is part of our series of short overviews of late-stage startups, which are part of Startup Genome’s Hypergrowth, a late-stage scaling program in partnership with the Tokyo government)