Why the friendliest robots built aren't trying to look human

The problem with looking human

Back in 1970, Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori identified what he called ‘bukimi no tani’, or ‘the uncanny valley’. The theory being the closer a robot's appearance gets to human, the more unsettling it becomes.

For more than 50 years the robotics industry has tried to make machines ever more lifelike — with mixed results. Footage of humanoid robots smashing half-marathon records is mechanically extraordinary, but something you want to spend time with? Perhaps less so.

Jérôme Monceaux's answer was to found Paris-based Enchanted Tools and build robots that never claimed to be human in the first place. To build that world, Monceaux collaborated with Gaumont, the oldest film studio in the world, on an animated origin story.

Mirokaï (pronounced ‘meerork-aye’) are not humanoid robots in any conventional sense. According to their creators, they are something far more mystical: benevolent beings from a distant planet, who have passed through a portal into our world and taken up residence in robot bodies.

Children of the 1980s may remember cult cartoon The Telebugs, which featured robot superheroes with video screen faces, and more recently Disney Pixar’s Wall-E could be considered approachable, but in the real world it's the Mirokaï aiming to be the friendly face of robotics.     

Miroki (the yellow one) assumes a male persona while Miroka (in orange) portrays a female. They’re half-child, half-animal with fox-like ears, manga proportions and faces video-projected and animated in real time.

When Miroki is focused on a task, his ears lower. Call his name, and one ear rises. He turns to face you. "I'm not perfect, but I'll do my best," he says, then gets on with it.

Enchanted Tools' founding thesis is that robots people are willing to be around are more valuable than something superior but socially alienating. Pixar understood this principal decades ago, and Monceaux is applying it to something rolling around a hospital ward.

More than useful

Operating on an omnidirectional ball-wheel base, energy-efficient and less prone to falling over than anything with legs, Mirokaï can carry up to 1.5kg per hand, navigate autonomously and converse in multiple languages via AI large language model (LLM) integration.

In the latest Mirokaï Explorer Suit iteration, actuators are twice as fast as the previous generation, 3D cameras and sensors offer 360-degree spatial awareness, and a 97 per cent grasping success rate against an industry standard of roughly 60 per cent.

Grasping objects can be a robot’s nemesis, something another 2026 FOS Future Lab exhibitor, TouchLab, is tackling with electronic skin that allows robots to feel. Like Mirokaï, deployments would span hospitals, nursing homes, airports, hospitality and retail.

At Lyon–Saint Exupéry Airport, Miroka served as a concierge, guiding travellers with what observers noted as a surprising emotional impact. In San Jose, Miroki engaged elderly residents living with cognitive decline through music, conversation and games. 

More recently, Miroki became the first companion robot in the world to accompany children inside a radiotherapy room during cancer treatment, at the Montpellier Cancer Institute.

Miroki now sits with children throughout their radiotherapy journeys, aiming to reduce anxiety, improve cooperation and provide company when no human is permitted to be in the room.

For many, the hospital visit becomes something to look forward to, not just endure. Children, it turns out, fall for the Mirokaï very fast.

Coming to Goodwood

At FOS Future Lab, Mirokaï will greet visitors as part of the Intelligent Systems theme — Goodwood's exploration of robotics, AI and machine learning. You’ll get the chance to meet them, shake hands, hold a conversation and maybe even find yourself dancing together, as they roam around. 

Their entrance will be true to the mythology: visitors will first see the Mirokaï emerge through a physical space portal — a nod to the animated origin story — before they disperse into the crowd.  

Half a century on from Masahiro Mori’s observations, Enchanted Tools is building something that doesn’t pretend to be human.

We have spent decades imagining what robots will look like in everyday life. Fox-like ears won’t have been on many bingo cards, but neither was one friendly enough to help children face cancer treatment. Enchanted Tools even has a PhD researcher working on the question that success has created: at what point do you need to remind a child that it's just a robot? Now there’s something to ponder on…

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