Embodied, Inc Launches Moxie – A Robot Promoting Cognitive Learning in Children

Embodied, Inc. has announced the launch of Moxie, a fun, safe and engaging companion for children designed to promote social, emotional and cognitive development through play-based learning.

Embodied assembled a world class team of experts in child development, engineering, technology, game design, and entertainment to build Moxie with machine learning technology that allows it to perceive, process and respond to natural conversation, eye contact, facial expressions and other behavior as well as recognize and recall people, places, and things.

“We’re at a tipping point in the way we will interact with technology,” said Paolo Pirjanian, CEO and Founder of Embodied, Inc. and former CTO of iRobot. “At Embodied, we have been rethinking and reinventing how human-machine interaction is done beyond simple verbal commands, to enable the next generation of computing, and to power a new class of machines capable of fluid social interaction. Moxie is a new type of robot that has the ability to understand and express emotions with emotive speech, believable facial expressions and body language, tapping into human psychology and neurology to create deeper bonds.”

“We have been working on this project for four years with a dedicated team that has worked tirelessly to make the amazing inventions that are required to bring Moxie to life.  Now we are excited to finally bring Moxie to families to help their children with social emotional development.”

To design Moxie Embodied created SocialXTM, a platform that enables children to engage with Moxie through natural interaction (i.e., facial expressions, conversation, body language, etc.), evoking trust, empathy and motivation as well as deeper engagement to promote developmental skills.

To keep things fresh and exciting for children, every week is a different theme such as kindness, friendship, empathy or respect, and children are tasked to help Moxie with missions that explore human experiences, ideas, and life skills. These missions are activities that include creative unstructured play like drawing, mindfulness practice through breathing exercises and meditation, reading with Moxie, and exploring ways to be kind to others. Moxie encourages curiosity so children discover the world and people around them. All these activities help children learn and safely practice essential life skills such as turn taking, eye contact, active listening, emotion regulation, empathy, relationship management, and problem solving.

Embodied has also partnered with Encyclopaedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster to integrate Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary for Children, enabling Moxie to provide age-appropriate definitions and related information to help children learn and understand the meanings of new words and concepts. This is the first of many integrations with Moxie that deliver on Britannica and Merriam-Webster’s shared mission to inspire curiosity and the joy of learning.

Over time, Moxie learns more about the child to better personalize its content to help with individual developmental goals. Embodied has taken careful steps to ensure that information provided by children and families is handled with high standards of privacy and security. Moxie and its full ecosystem will be COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) Safe Harbor certified so parents can feel safe knowing that Moxie employs leading data integrity and security procedures and that its systems are regularly audited to ensure full compliance.  Further, personally identifiable data and sensitive information is encrypted with the highest level of security and can only be decrypted by a unique key that only the parent has access to.

Embodied is financially backed by some of the most prominent corporate and institutional investors including Intel Capital, Toyota AI Ventures, Amazon Alexa Fund, Sony Innovation Fund, JAZZ Venture Partners, Calibrate Ventures, Osage University Partners, Grishin Robotics, and Vulcan Capital.

“Moxie is a game-changing technology that has the potential to transform the way that children build social, emotional and cognitive skills,” said Wendell Brooks, Intel senior vice president and president of Intel Capital. “As an early investor in Embodied, it’s exciting to see how the company is leveraging machine learning to create innovations that enhance our daily lives. Moxie is a true reflection of that.”

Moxie will be available for pre-order on embodied.com and similar to smartphones, pricing will include device pricing plus an operating subscription plan. For launch, purchase will include a year’s subscription that provides access to over-the-air software updates that will add new and improved features and content, monthly Moxie Mission Pack mailings, special access to the Global Robotics Laboratory (G.R.L.) child portal site, and behavioral analytics via the Embodied Moxie parent app. Customers interested in purchasing can place a fully-refundable reservation at embodied.com to gain access to the exclusive pre-order launch. Embodied is currently taking applications for kids interested in being a part of their Moxie Pioneer Mentor Program, a community of families with the unique opportunity to experience an early version of Moxie for free.

Click here to read our full interview with Paolo Pirjanian the CEO and Founder of Embodied. In this interview he discusses how he discovered robotics and his journey as an entrepreneur. He also discusses machine learning, natural language processing, and other technologies behind Moxie.

About Embodied, Inc.

Embodied, Inc.’s mission is to build socially and emotionally intelligent animate companions with believable personality and empathy to enhance our daily lives. Backed by a veteran team of technologists, neuroscientists, child development specialists, and creative storytellers, Embodied is rethinking and reimagining human-machine interaction. Through extensive research, they have developed a new platform, SocialXTM, that provides a way to use natural human interaction to engage with technology. The first iteration of this technology is Moxie, an animate companion for children developed to help promote social, emotional and cognitive learning. Follow along @embodiedinc on all social channels: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.