The Ultimate Companion Robot Is Here! Loona Feels More Alive Than Pepper or aibo
Hi to everyone quietly living in no-pets-allowed apartments — I’m Hide, tech journalist and part-time house-husband.
I’m genuinely moved. Truly amazed. That you can just go out and buy a robot like this now.
Loona is a buddy robot that made waves at CES, the world’s biggest consumer electronics show. Yep — something between a pet and a friend. What’s amazing is its range of emotional expressions and how it behaves like it’s alive. It’s clearly cuter than any robot that came before! Let me introduce a few of its amazing habits.
I’ve seen and touched all kinds of these comforting robots you keep at home — aibo, Pepper, LOVOT, and more. From that experience, I can say for sure: it beats them all! My daughter has totally become friends with it, and they play together.
Loona reacts right away when you wave at itIt can get back up on its own when it falls over, but sometimes it deliberately doesn’t get up on the first try. So real~Hold out a fist and Loona raises its paw too. Give it a little bump and it’s happy. Amazing...
## Quick movements and clear emotions make it feel alive
Don’t older robots kind of shuffle around? Slow — which is cute in its own way. But once you get used to it, it can start to feel a little frustrating.
Japanese robots tend to move pretty slowly, right? You can really feel the national character...
Loona is surprisingly quick. That’s a mixed blessing (lol). It zooms around fast enough that you think it might give a kid a bump on the head if they collided. That said, it hasn’t bumped into anyone so far, and I’m more worried about Loona itself getting hurt.
From 3D ToF sensors to voice and gesture recognition — despite being palm-sized, its specs beat other robots
When I first saw it in a video, I honestly thought, “Ah, it’s still in development, so this is CG.” And then it turned out to be a real, working product (lol). It moves that lively and quickly. It’s like “a Pixar robot character stepped into real life.” Seriously impressive.
Its facial expressions change quickly and clearly too. Japanese robots have kind of vague emotional expressions, right? You can feel the national character there too, but for me, interacting with something as clear as Loona is more fun. It recognizes my face, so when it can’t see me it wanders around looking anxious, and when it sees my face it happily wiggles its ears — it’s basically a living creature.
It has a story too — nice
Initial setup happens on your phone, and I was surprised there’s a story to it. You answer a few questions at the start, and it seems this is where something like its personality gets decided.
You answer a few questions
The setup is that a newborn fairy, on its way to you, accidentally ended up inside a robot. Right after the animation of the fairy entering Loona, the robot starts moving, connecting smoothly with the story. A classy touch.
The sync between the animation and the robot was so good it moved me
The final screen with text keeps being used afterward as a screen that shows “how Loona feels.” With other companies’ robots, you can only kind of guess their feelings, but with Loona, you can see exactly what it’s thinking on your phone — nice.
Games, home monitoring, and even programming lessons!
You might think you’d stop playing games with a robot like this, but the games with Loona are pretty fun. It can chase a laser pointer, play with a ball, or charge like a bull when it sees a red cloth — it really feels like playing with a pet.
It reacts to a red handkerchief and charges! The kids love it
Sometimes a slot machine shows up on its face — lower its ears and it spins, and if it lands on dogs, it imitates a dog. There are lots of random elements like that, so you don’t get bored.
It can keep an eye on things at home too. Our resident robot ebo had tank treads, so I worried it’d get stuck somewhere, and what it could see was limited. Loona drives powerfully, so it can reliably check in on the kids or pets.
ebo, the pet-monitoring robot — handy, but a little unreliable for monitoringLoona drives stably and fast — practical
I also like that you can try some pretty complex programming. Kids tend to get more interested when it’s a robot they’re already friends with. Our family had been using iRobot’s programming robot, but getting the kids interested was hard... With Loona it’s easy, so it’s excellent for leaping right over that first hurdle into programming.
Programming with Loona looks really promising — I’ll try it with my daughter and report back later
With all that going for it, the price is just under ¥50,000. Don’t robots like this usually feel like they’d cost around ¥1 million? And this is ¥50,000. I was really surprised. I haven’t tried the auto-charging dock yet, so the battery runs out often, but even so, this little one is already part of the family.
A wonderful robot that brings smiles to the kids and the whole family.
