Interesting company: KOMPAÏ robotics – Mobile Robots Serving Healthcare.
It is somehow a spin-off from the Robosoft company. They also occupy ‘robosoft.com’. But what to Robosoft? There is an entry in the ECHORD++ that is a bit older here. Established in 1985 by INRIA researchers and involved in research until about 2014, doing mobile robots for elderly care.
There is also a company called Robosoft Technologies. They are however not doing robotics it appears. Their about us mentions “A catalyst for digital business solutions since 1996”.
Then, there is an Indian company called Robosoft Systems: “Robosoft Systems is a privately held company located in Mumbai, India. Robosoft Systems is primarily a Research and Development based company in field of Internet of Things, Smart Manufacturing, Robotics and Automation since 2008.” The created DuctBot for HVAC incpection and cleaning for Indoor Air Quality (IAQ).
Kompaï robotics also mentions on the website ‘The KOMPAÏ Cat – An emotional robot’ here. The Dutch company Nenko includes that one in the video below. Nenko provides multi sensory stimulation. They have a category in their webshop Affection Animals, which is quite extensive.
The robot cats and dogs are from Joy for All, another interesting company with their own webshop. They also have a funny little robot bird, the Walker Squaker:
The ‘about us‘ section of Joy for All (the brand name used by the company ‘Ageless Innovations’) tells the tale of the brnad, the company and its products well. It started as a brand by Hasbro, then it was spun out.
An alternative robot cat is MetaCat, priced around $200.
Petopedia did a decent review video with different pets. They did not include much info about price and where to get it, but it does provide some nice images:
Tombot is another robot dog puppy.
PPM became shareholder and development partner of KOMPAÏ Robotics AS, in Biarritz in France. PPM is located in Trondheim, facilities include a Nursing Home Lab equipped with service robots from various manufacturers.
For their service robots for elderly care PPM has an interesting set of descriptions of applications, or usage scenario’s. These mostly involve the KOMPAÏ Assist robot:
For now, however, like so many other healthcare service robots, it mainly functions as a glorified music player, an iPad with speakers on a mobile platform:
Let us hope that this robotic firm actually manages to go beyond the point where a company like QBMT \ Zora (a software platform around the Nao robot) got stuck. I believe that company ended, but the technology was transferred to several others: Robots in de Zorg (this is more of a tradename of Interactive Robotics who are focusing a bit more on education through another tradename Robots in de Klas, letting kids program Nao and such, but it looks like they are also still servicing the existing customer base for Zora) and another is Zorabots which also partners with Interactive Robotics and seems to be focusing more on creating integrated solutions through their Zorabots Operating System that connects with robotic and other hardware and software.
Where have all the robots gone? Long time passing
Gone to showrooms, every one. All for naught but had some fun.
