I tried to go into meeting Mirumi with a heart of steel. There are a lot of cute robots at CES every year, that is a given, and you can’t just let yourself get wooed by every puppy-eyed bot that looks your way. But boy did I melt immediately when that silly little thing locked its gaze on me, then bashfully tucked its head away.
Mirumi is the latest bizarre-but-endearing robot from Japanese startup Yukai Engineering, the company responsible for the Qoobo cat-tailed pillow and the finger-nibbling kitty plush, Amagami Ham Ham. All it does is stare at you and move its head around a little until you’ve successfully been tricked into a few moments of happiness. The idea is to emulate that distinctly joyful experience of meeting eyes with a baby in public — a quick, random interaction that can turn your mood around. Mirumi looks like the combination of a fledgling bird and a shrunken-down yeti, and its long arms let it cling to objects like a purse handle so it can come along wherever you go, and stare down strangers.
Inside Mirumi is a distance sensor and an inertial measurement unit, which tell it when there are people nearby and when it’s on the move or being touched. It has different responses for each of these scenarios. When a person first comes into its line of vision, for example, it will get shy and briefly hide its face, like it did for me. Then, it cautiously peeks out again. Jostle it around and it might shake its head, “No.” It doesn’t make any sounds.
Playing with Mirumi at CES Unveiled, I found myself delighted at absolutely everything it did. It has a nice bit of weight to it when you pick it up, sort of like a tiny kitten. And on that same note, its little movements make it give off a subtle vibration, almost as if it were purring. I hooked its bendable arms around my wrist, which also had a bulky watch on it and a camera dangling by the strap, and Mirumi felt pretty secure on top of all that as I gently waved it around. On a thinner perch, like a bag strap, its arms wrap fully for a better hold. (I probably wouldn’t trust it to stay on if I was in a packed subway car or similarly crowded environment, though).
Mirumi is rechargeable and should last about eight hours before it needs to be plugged in again. We don’t know yet what the final color options will be, but Yukai had white, black and peach Mirumis on display. The company is planning to launch a crowd-funding campaign later this year before releasing the robot, and it hasn’t yet been determined if it will be sold internationally.
Is it kind of ridiculous? Yes, absolutely. Especially when you consider the price: around $70, according to a Yukai rep. But kind of ridiculous is Yukai’s whole thing, and at least for me (and just about every person who stopped by during the demo), Mirumi elicited the exact emotional response it was made for. “This is all about making people around you happier,” Yukai’s Hiroko Sato said during our chat at CES Unveiled. I can’t really hate on that.
Speaking of ridiculous, Yukai is also showing off a small cat-shaped device called Nékojita FuFu that will blow on food or a hot drink to cool it off for you. Its curved arms hook onto the side of a mug or bowl, or it can be set down on a flat surface to blow on a plate.
The company says it can bring down the temperature of hot water by 30 degrees Fahrenheit in three to five minutes. We didn’t have any scalding liquids on hand to test that out on the show floor, but it’s basically just a small fan with different blowing modes packaged in a cute silicone body, and the fan did indeed blow air.
As a person who waits an annoyingly long time to take the first sip of coffee or soup because I’m really sensitive to temperatures, I can appreciate an option that doesn’t involve me doing all that work. I can’t see myself going out and buying this, but it strikes me as the sort of product that makes for a fun gift — the kind that’s partially a joke, but also functional. Nékojita FuFu is expected to be released later this year for $25 following a crowd-funding campaign.
