Allegedly adorable surveillance bot Kuri to be discontinued

Kuri just wanted to watch your children play. 

The roving surveillance bot, unveiled last year at CES, was billed as the first home robot that could actually catch on with consumers around the country. What with its unassuming — even “cute” — design and ability to autonomously decide to film people and pets in your home, Kuri represented a stark departure from the blind robo-murder dogs we have all grown to regard with caution. 

Alas, nothing gold can stay: Mayfield Robotics, Kuri’s manufacturer and part of the Bosch Startup Platform, announced today that things weren’t looking so hot for the 14-pound robot. 

“Sadly, our Kuri manufacturing will cease, and the Kuri robots that have been made will not ship to customers,” the manufacturer said in a company press release. “All pre-order deposits will be refunded to our customers.”

This is a shocking turnabout for Kuri, which was initially hailed by a prominent tech blog as possibly one day “[replacing] your little brother as the cutest member of your family.” 

So what went wrong? Are people just not interested in having a camera equipped, four-microphone stocked, mini robot following them around their homes, recording their every move?

Definitely not, insists Mayfield Robotics. You see, it’s not that people prefer jogging death-bots, it’s that there was a problem with, uh, “business fit.” Yeah, business fit, that sounds right. 

“From the beginning, we have been constantly looking for the best paths to achieve scale and continue to advance our innovative technology,” the press release continued. “Typically, startups in the Bosch Startup Platform are integrated into existing Bosch business units, but after extensive review, there was not a business fit within Bosch to support and scale our business.” 

So there you have it. In the end, Kuri’s stated cause of death wasn’t a lack of consumer interest or a failure to get the tech right. Instead, the ignoble end of a rather ignoble creature was the inability to figure out how to wrap the product into the larger business conglomerate that is Bosch. 

Maybe Kuri’s designers should have also made it combat-ready? There will alway be a market for that.