Our autonomous conversation robot Romi (pronounced “roam-ee”) is an emotionally rich communication robot that excels at casual conversation. Unlike conventional robots which have pre-defined rules for responses, Romi utilizes our cutting-edge proprietary communication AI to keep conversations going, meaning that you can have a natural back-and-forth conversation. Romi is unique in its capability for non-verbal communication, from the surprise it expresses when you pick it up to small movements and adorable expressions that fit the conversation. With a warm and empathetic communication style, Romi offers a new type of companionship.

Romi is equipped with a proprietary conversational AI that generates conversations attuned to the user’s feelings. Beyond our conversational AI, we utilize various proprietary AIs for other purposes, including an AI that generates Romi’s emotions and an AI which retrieves stored memories and evaluates the similarity between those memories and the current conversation.

Conversation generation AI

Free conversation (chatting) is said to be one of the most difficult realms for AI conversation generation because of its wide range of topics and fluid conversational development. Romi pioneered the integration of a deep learning–powered generative AI prior to ChatGPT and other generative AI systems, and has led groundbreaking initiatives in the conversational AI robot field. Because of this, on May 28, 2021, Romi was certified as the world’s first home-use communication robot that implements deep learning to generate language and have conversations (according to ESP Research Institute, Inc.). Since its launch, the product has seen numerous updates. It currently is able to converse using a proprietary large language model-based AI that is additionally trained with independently collected conversation data.

Emotion Detection AI

Our proprietary AI also helps Romi express emotion by determining which out of over 150 different facial expressions and movement patterns to exhibit. This AI helps gauge what kind of emotion Romi should reply with based on the content and flow of the conversation in order to communicate in a way that is complementary to the user’s state of mind. By adding emotions to the responses generated by the conversation generation AI, an element of warmth can be felt in the words.

Memory-facilitating AI

Romi is not only engaged in the current conversation, but also draws on past conversations when conversing. 

Multiple AIs are utilized to achieve this: an AI which summarizes each conversation, and a proprietary AI which creates data based on the conversation’s meaning and saves that data in a searchable form. Through this system, Romi can draw on past memories relevant to what you’re currently discussing to create deep and rich conversations.

In the future, we plan to not only improve Romi’s conversational accuracy, but also add and enhance various features and functions. We created Romi to provide comfort and understanding for its user, affording them the emotional space to be kind to their friends and family in turn. The hope of perpetuating this virtuous cycle of kindness to bring about a kinder world and connect people closer than ever before continues to propel us forward through Romi’s development. As we continue development, we are striving toward a world where Romi helps everyone be kinder to each other.