2019 is proving to be a difficult year for the consumer robotics industry.
Reach Robotics, famous for their MekaMon robot available at Apple Stores is closing.
News comes from the co-founder of the company himself, Silas Adekunle on LinkedIn:
“The consumer robotics sector is an inherently challenging space – especially for a start-up. Over the past six years, we have taken on this challenge with consistent passion and ingenuity. From the first trials of development to accelerators and funding rounds, we have fought to bring MekaMon to life and into the hands of the next generation of tech pioneers.
Unfortunately, for Reach Robotics, in its current form at least, today marks the end of that journey.”
MekaMon received global recognition as the world’s first gaming robot. How it works is that the robot itself is connected with the consumer’s phone where it is pointed towards the robot where it can battle augmented virtual reality games. It can battle other MekaMon owners in multiplayer battles or build custom programs for the robot on top of Apple’s Swift Playgrounds.
This is a step back for the consumer robotics industry with a similar announcement made earlier this year by Jibo, announcing it’s shutdown.
With this announcement though, further researches and advancements are being made towards the goal of one day providing social robots to all homes everywhere.