Abbie is designed to encourage trust, openness, and connection, from the way she speaks to her size and color and the way her AI is programmed to learn about and interact with aged care residents.

A lot of robots that have attempted the companion social empathy type approach before have, I think, made the mistake of leaning far too deep into the uncanny valley, actually trying to make the l- robot look human.

We've very intentionally designed Abbie as a character that is not a human and a separate category to a human, but is a new thing, essentially, which is something that is fun and enjoyable and is about being striking and unique.

She's, like, got these big, wonderful eyes that will blink back at you and, uh, are quite expressive.

And I think that we've taken very explicit inspiration from Disney and Pixar-type designs for, for our robot.

We're very clear that this is... it's a character.

That's, that's what we're building, and that's where the design inspiration comes from.

I, I, I'm also thinking, how do I begin to trust a robot? I mean, if I ask a robot to do something and it doesn't quite fulfill my expectations, there's a balance there, right?