Website in testing & development — content under editorial review
A Field Guide to Home & Desk Robots

The support-status tracker

Companion robots die differently: servers go dark and a family member stops moving. This tracker records, for every specimen in the registry, whether the maker is healthy, what depends on the cloud, and what a shutdown would actually break — plus the full record of the robots that already didn't make it.

Current registry — maker health at a glance

RobotMakerMaker healthCloud dependencySubscription
Microduck Pollen Robotics / Hugging Face IN STOCK healthy none none
Reachy Mini Pollen Robotics / Hugging Face IN STOCK healthy none none
Robomate ROBOMATES PREORDER watch none none
Loona KEYi Tech IN STOCK healthy required none — GPT-4o voice chat included without subscription (as of Aug 2026)
Loona DeskMate KEYi Tech IN STOCK healthy required unverified — integrations may gate features; verify before purchase advice
EMO Living.ai PREORDER watch required none required for core features; buy only from living.ai — marketplace listings are gray-market
Eilik Energize Lab IN STOCK healthy none none — fully offline; no app or account required
Vector 2.0 Digital Dream Labs (ANKI brand) REGIONAL troubled required-with-subscription $11.99/mo or $99.99/yr for voice features — first-year TCO ≈ $300; wire-pod self-hosting is the community alternative
Ropet Ropet PREORDER watch optional basic features free; optional ~$9.99/mo premium tier
Moflin Casio IN STOCK healthy optional none required; optional care plan in Japan (Club Moflin)
Petoi Bittle X Petoi IN STOCK healthy none none
SunFounder PiDog SunFounder IN STOCK healthy optional none (LLM API costs are yours)
Qoobo Yukai Engineering IN STOCK healthy none none

Assessments as of 2026-08-28; methodology and evidence per specimen page source records.

The record — robots that died (and what each death taught)

Moxie (Embodied) · Jan 2025

Funding collapsed Nov 2024; cloud servers off Jan 30, 2025; $799 robots bricked, no refunds. Community OpenMoxie project revives units locally.

Lesson: Server-side intelligence = the robot dies with the company.

Jibo · 2019

The pioneering social robot said goodbye in a farewell update after the company wound down; servers followed.

Lesson: Being first is not a survival trait.

Anki (Cozmo & Vector 1.0) · 2019

Anki shut down despite ~$100M+ raised. Vector survived through acquisition by Digital Dream Labs — with features moved behind a subscription — and through the community wire-pod project.

Lesson: An open escape hatch (wire-pod) is the difference between dead and undead.

Aibo (Japan sales) · winding down 2026

Sony announced in June 2026 that Japanese Aibo sales end when inventory runs out; US sales and support continue.

Lesson: Even the category icon contracts. Cloud plan continuity is the question to watch.

Samsung Ballie · never shipped

Announced CES 2020, re-announced repeatedly, indefinitely shelved by early 2026 without ever being sold.

Lesson: A robot is not a product until it ships.

Why we keep this page: "will it still work in three years?" became a rational, researchable question the day Moxie's servers went dark. Nobody answers it systematically — so the registry does. Alerts for status changes arrive with the newsletter (coming with launch).