It looks like Jibo, the Boston-based maker of its namesake social robot, has a copycat in China.
A Chinese company is advertising a consumer robot called Oding at www.odingbot.com that shares some striking similarities to Jibo. Most notably, Oding has the same white form factor with a black screen face, and it can turn and wiggle its robo-hips in a manner that's very similar to Jibo.
For reference, this is what Jibo currently looks like:
And this is what Oding looks like.
We reached out to Jibo to see if the company had any comment but haven't heard back yet. The similarity was first pointed out by The Robot Report last week. Jibo founder Cynthia Breazeal told The Robot Report that there is no connection between the Chinese knockoff and Jibo.
As The Robot Report noted, it's not new that a Chinese company has made something that looks and acts very similar to a popular consumer electronics product created elsewhere. Quartz published a report in October about how Chinese manufacturers turn to places like crowdfunding sites — which is how Jibo was originally funded — for ideas to copy.
The company behind the Jibo copycat is called EBGbot, which is registered under another company called HiChina Zhicheng Technology. A message sent to an email address on Oding's website was not returned.
