Pophie vs Robie: Which do you prefer? (2 Viewers)

[Chris]

Someone noticed the Pophie on display at CES didn’t have the torso movement previously seen in Robie. I wonder if InsBotics have removed this feature from Pophie? Personally I prefer the added movement found in Robie, feels more lifelike and allows more range of expressions.

Also noticed they have changed the position of the microphone openings to under the fur line on Pophie which is great, but have changed the size and position of Pophie’s eyes. Think I prefer the previous eyes and facial configuration of Robie, even with the microphone openings showing.

Robie conversation- notice the subtle flexibility.

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Pophie conversation- seems stiffer.

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Robie torso movement.

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[Chris]

InsBotics have removed the torso movement. Thanks to a member of our fb group for spotting this change. Previously I had thought they might have disabled the bending while Pophie was on the charging base. Will be interesting to see if anyone else notices or thinks this will affect the companionship experience. Personally it loses a lot of the appeal for me and is now very similar to Ropet. The small subtle complexities of movement are what keep people interested long term. It just seems so stiff and dare I say, robotic, now.

Comment from the Pophie team on Rednote explaining why they removed it:

“So, about the decision to remove the waist’s freedom of movement… we debated it for a really, really long time internally. That gentle movement you mentioned, where “it seems to be listening to you carefully”—that was actually one of the key details we were most excited to include in our original design. But like you probably get, adding just one more degree of freedom means dealing with layers of costs for structure, drive systems, and material compatibility. Plus, there’s the whole safety thing for a kids’ product. We really wanted Naubao (Pophie) to be something that could make it into more regular families, so we had to make this tough call.

But hey, just so you know, we haven’t forgotten about those gentle movements we had to put on hold for now. When the tech gets better and the costs are more manageable down the road, we’ll definitely bring back that “life-like response” for Nuobao (Pophie).

Thanks for getting where we’re coming from with this decision, and thanks for being patient with Nuobao (Pophie).”