Ronan Soffer, Chief Product Officer at Intuition Robotics, explains why data-driven methods fail when creating new companion robot categories for older adults.
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“Nobody out there is Googling, I need a desktop social robot for my grandma. Nobody. It's a not, it's a non-existing category. We're creating it.”
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More from Ronan Soffer
Insight
Soffer: Human-centric product management is an art, not data-driven science
“Product is not science. And product, in most cases, especially when it is human centric and highly driven on experiences, or based on experiences, it can, it can't be cautious of data driven.”
Ronan SofferAug 25, 2025▶ 17:05Senior Care with AI: Compassionate Companion Robots with Intuition Robotics
Disclosure
Soffer: ElliQ robot is built for social presence, not physical chores
“EleQ doesn't make coffee or clean your floor. Her robotic embodiment is only to serve as a presence. And then that is sharing time and space with you on a day-to-day basis. The robot's role is really to be something that isn't an app on a smartphone or somethi…”
Ronan SofferAug 25, 2025▶ 2:29Senior Care with AI: Compassionate Companion Robots with Intuition Robotics
Insight
Soffer: Empathy is a functional tool for product managers, not morality
“Product managers need empathy because they need to be able, just like that movie, Being John Malkovich, they need to enter the cognition of their user. They need to view the world in the eyes of their user, and that is not science.”
Ronan SofferAug 25, 2025▶ 19:36Senior Care with AI: Compassionate Companion Robots with Intuition Robotics
Insight
Soffer: LLMs Alone Cannot Deliver Fully Contextualized Companion Care
“And in doing that, we've added dimensions that the semantic layer itself, even if you enrich its contextual capabilities, will not be able to do. Unless married with other technologies, which is what we're doing here.”
Ronan SofferAug 25, 2025▶ 30:23Senior Care with AI: Compassionate Companion Robots with Intuition Robotics
Disclosure
Soffer: Loosening ElliQ LLM constraints increased user engagement via natural conversations
“We've now gained enough confidence to remove two or three of these leashes and allow the LLM-based capabilities to have more face time with users in a more natural way. So we're seeing engagement go up from even more natural Predictable conversations, and then…”
Ronan SofferAug 25, 2025▶ 31:45Senior Care with AI: Compassionate Companion Robots with Intuition Robotics
Insight
Soffer: Robotics success requires cross-domain understanding of human habits and intent
“What intuition robotics is saying, for this to really succeed in the field with humans over time, there's a missing piece in the middle, and that's the heart and the brain of the machine. The part that doesn't care about, I can do this, or I can do that. The p…”
Ronan SofferAug 25, 2025▶ 34:26Senior Care with AI: Compassionate Companion Robots with Intuition Robotics
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