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The Roboming Fellow Is a Personal Robot Friend

If you’ve already seen the trailer for the upcoming sci-fi film Passengers, you’ll probably remember the little remote-controlled robot Chris Pratt uses to deliver his date night invitation to his spaceship companion, Jennifer Lawrence. It seems the future isn’t really so far off, as we might all have the option to have our very own “personal robot friend” soon too.

The Roboming Fellow amounts to what happens when you take a Roomba robotic vacuum and reapply some of the same technologies for home security and pet assistance duties. And like the Roomba and its robotic ilk, this diminutive rolling bot uses a continuous track tread to navigate floors, guided by a perpetual spatial scanning system, alongside a radar for mapping, positioning and collision avoidance. Users can also take control of the robot to navigate it remotely using an app, or put the Roboming Fellow in “follow mode” for sidekick companionship.

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For security duty, the Roboming Fellow is equipped with a HD camera offering 45-degree rotational coverage, for both snapshots or continuous live-view video streaming – the physical equivalent of the robot’s eye. Pet owners will especially enjoy this feature to not only spy on their pets, but also follow them around the home. Parents could check on their children and deliver snacks from the other side of a home. Again, like robotic vacuums, this robot will return to a charger base automatically when recharging is needed, making maintenance mostly a non-issue.

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Roboming Fellow is currently being launched via an Indiegogo campaign.

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Only time will tell if we’ll all have your own droids running about our homes, some for household tasks, others for companionship. The Roboming Fellow might prove to be one of the first in domestic robotics charged with more than one duty, and one closer to being a housemate rather than just a servant.

Gregory Han is a Senior Editor at Design Milk. A Los Angeles native with a profound love and curiosity for design, hiking, tide pools, and road trips, a selection of his adventures and musings can be found at gregoryhan.com.