So you know when you watch The Jetsons or other TV shows or movies set in the future and robots are invariably way more integrated into life than they are now, and families even have their own robot helping out around the house doing stuff?

I never really thought I’d see anything like that in my lifetime because it all seemed so distant and futuristic, but with recent developments like robot tattoo artists and the new robotic army mule,  it looks like it might happen sooner than any of us thought. Now the next step has been taken with the advent of Jibo, which is being advertised as the first ‘family robot’ and has already raised $800K of its $1million goal through crowd funding.

Jibo doesn’t yet look like it will be as developed as some of the robots we’v seen in science fiction, but it will have a bunch of useful skills, which mainly revolve around reminding you of important events and stuff you have to do, as well as having a camera and being able to capture a bunch of those important family moments that you might have missed.

Perhaps the most impressive part of it though is that it uses some kind of facial recognition software to recognise everyone in your house so it can deliver the right messages at the right time. It’s also great at telling stories and entertaining your kids, and there’s going to be a bunch of apps developed for it that will probably let it do a whole bunch of other things. Let’s hope there isn’t one for planning to take over the world in there.

There’s a lot more information about Jibo over on its official website and you can also order one for around $500, although it won’t turn up until the end of next year. Still, you get to be one of the first to ever own a Jibo which has got to be a massive incentive, right? I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

There’s a promo video below too that explains a bunch about it as well if you want to check that out, although it is also one of the cheesiest things I’ve ever seen and actually made me think that Jibo was actually kind of creepy in that it would know stuff like my favourite takeaway meal. If I start seeing these things at my friends’ houses in the next couple of years I think I’m gonna be real freaked out and probably stop being friends with them.

But hey, you can make your ow mind up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N1Q8oFpX1Y