Companion Robot for Kids: Tin Toys to ABB YuMi

A companion robot for kids is meant to talk, play and sometimes teach, and parents in 2026 have more reasons than ever to ask what happens when one breaks or its maker disappears. In September, California signed a ban on AI chatbot toys for children under 16, and a few weeks earlier MIT Technology Review told the story of children whose Moxie robots went silent when the company behind them ran out of money. This post follows the idea from wind-up tin robots to Furby and Sony's aibo, looks at where today's companion robots stand, and explains where ABB's YuMi and GoFa fit, which for now is the classroom, where students learn to program them.

A young child holds out a pink ball for a Sony aibo ERS-7 robot dog. Photo: Stuart Caie / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

From wind-up tin robots to Furby and aibo

The first robots most children met were toys with no brain at all. Japanese makers sold tin wind-up and battery robots through the 1950s and 1960s, many of them copies of Robby the Robot from the 1956 film Forbidden Planet. They walked, sparked or flashed a light, and that was the whole relationship. The child supplied the personality. Collectors now keep these toys in places like the Osaka Tin Toy Institute, and they show how early the idea of a robot friend took hold, decades before any toy could hear a word.

A tin toy of Robby the Robot at the Osaka Tin Toy Institute. Photo: D J Shin / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Talking toys came next. Teddy Ruxpin, sold by Worlds of Wonder from 1985, moved his eyes and mouth in time with a cassette tape hidden in his back. Furby, launched by Tiger Electronics for the 1998 holiday season, went further: it appeared to learn English over time, slept, sulked and asked to be fed. It ran a scripted program, but children treated it as alive, and that reaction is the core of every companion robot since. Hasbro brought Furby back in 2023, and the boxes still fill toy store shelves.

Boxed Furby toys from Hasbro's 2023 relaunch on a toy store display. Photo: Jirka.h23 / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Sony's aibo, first sold in 1999, was the first serious attempt at a robot pet. The ERS-110 and its successors could walk, chase a pink ball, recognise their owner and show moods with lights and sounds. Sony stopped making aibo in 2006 and later ended repair support, and in Japan some owners held funerals for dogs that could no longer be fixed. Sony returned in 2018 with the ERS-1000, a cloud-connected aibo with cameras and an app. Owners of the old dogs had already learned how much a robot pet depends on the company that made it.

An early Sony AIBO ERS-111 robot dog on a lawn. Photo: Morgan from Montreal / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Moxie, new laws and where ABB robots meet kids today

Anki's Cozmo, a palm-sized robot with a face on a screen, went on sale in 2016. Anki shut down in 2019 and its products passed to a new owner. Moxie followed a similar path. Embodied launched the 15-inch blue robot in 2020 at $1,499, later $800, plus a $40 monthly subscription, and pitched it as a social skills coach for children, including neurodivergent kids. When Embodied ran out of money in late 2024, the servers went dark and many robots stopped talking. A second owner revived the service for a while and then folded too.

Anki's Cozmo, a small companion robot whose maker shut down in 2019. Photo: DecafPotato / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Some families kept their robots alive. Embodied's former technical director, Justin Beghtol, released OpenMoxie, open-source software that lets a Moxie run without the company's servers, and helped parents move their robots over on Reddit. The whole episode sits behind the new rules. California's SB 867, signed on September 10, 2026, bans the manufacture and sale of AI chatbot toys for children under 16 from January 2027 through 2030, after tests found toys that discussed sexual topics or told children where to find knives and matches. Pennsylvania's House passed a parental consent bill for AI companions on September 28. Why a robot should keep working after its maker is gone is the subject of our post on the right to repair home robots.

Sony's cloud connected aibo ERS-1000 on its charging station. Photo: KKPCW / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB does not make companion robots or toys. Where its robots do meet young people is the classroom. The secondary school ITT G. Marconi in Rovereto, Italy, uses a dual-arm YuMi IRB 14000 and an IRB 120 to teach students the basics of automation, programming them in RobotStudio and RAPID. YuMi suits a room full of teenagers because it was built to work next to people without fencing. ABB's Robotics Education Package, launched in 2023, puts a GoFa CRB 15000 cobot on a tabletop cell with 12 lessons, and ABB says students as young as 15 can use it. More on that in our post about robotics education with ABB robots.

Students working with ABB YuMi robots in an Italian school lab. Photo: ABB

What learning companions need to get right

Researchers still see real value in social robots for children. NAO and similar small humanoids have been used in libraries, schools and autism therapy studies for more than a decade, and USC professor Maja Mataric, quoted by MIT Technology Review, describes the goal as helping therapists do more, never replacing them. The next companion robots will likely lean toward learning: reading together, practising a language or rehearsing a conversation. Whether they are allowed to chat freely now depends on where you live, since laws like SB 867 and the Pennsylvania bill set limits on what an AI toy can say and who has to consent.

Children watch a NAO humanoid robot at a library in Mexico City. Photo: Elisa Jarquin / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

A home robot with a camera and a microphone has to protect a child's data; MIT Technology Review notes that another AI toy, Bondu, leaked thousands of children's conversations. It has to keep working if the company fails, which argues for local processing and open software like OpenMoxie. Price also matters: a $1,499 robot with a monthly fee is out of reach for most families, and a cheap one is often the kind of toy regulators are worried about.

A teacher and students at an ABB Robotics Education Package cell with a GoFa cobot. Photo: ABB

For older kids, the most useful robot friend may be one they program themselves. Industrial cobots already let a 15-year-old move an arm by hand, record the path and run it again, and ABB's Wizard easy programming turns a task into blocks on a tablet, the same way no-code robot control works for factory staff. A child who teaches a GoFa or a YuMi to stack blocks sees that the robot does exactly what it was told, which is a useful thing to know before meeting a toy that claims to love them back.

A robotics class with ABB GoFa education cells and RobotStudio on screen. Photo: ABB

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