SAN FRANCISCO and RAMAT GAN, Israel, Jan. 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Intuition Robotics, the creator of ElliQ, the Active Aging Companion, announced today the launch of its beta program, as the company approaches commercial launch in 2018. ElliQ is a proactive social robot designed to encourage an active and engaged lifestyle by helping to bridge the digital divide and keeping families closer together.

In the beta program, ElliQ will be introduced into the homes of dozens of older adults in California and Florida for an in-depth multi-week user trial. Intuition Robotics has partnered with Village to Village Network, Comfort Keepers®  and individual families that joined the program through the company's website. In the beta, the company plans to test how ElliQ integrates into the day-to-day lives of the seniors and their families, and examine how it can improve ElliQ to fulfill the company's mission to empower older adults to keep sharp, active and engaged. ElliQ has been rigorously tested with older adults over the past year and the response has been uniformly enthusiastic. Now the company is ready for a prolonged beta to test the impact on daily life over time and ensure an exceptional user experience that will make the product successful.

"Our mission with ElliQ is to harness the proactive power of cognitive computing to empower older adults to overcome the digital divide, and pursue an active lifestyle," says Dor Skuler, CEO and Founder of Intuition Robotics. "We are fortunate to have been working with many older adults to develop ElliQ's features and user experience, to meet their needs. Now, we are excited to begin the beta program as the next step on our way to a 2018 launch."

Over the past year, Intuition Robotics has worked on turning its prototype, first unveiled 12 months ago, into a product. ElliQ is designed to be a proactive, emotive social robot, featuring an entirely new way to engage users with remarkable ease of use and elegant design.  The beta program will use the first units coming off the company's new manufacturing line. The company is conducting the very first demonstrations of the beta version of ElliQ to a select audience at CES 2018, where it has been declared the winner of the CES Best of Innovation award in the Smart Home category.

The company is also announcing additional investment from Samsung NEXT, SPARX Group and Glory Ventures bringing its total investment to $22M. Prominent previous investors include Toyota AI Ventures, iRobot, Bloomberg Beta, and leading Israeli-based venture capital firms.

Since emerging from stealth in January 2017, Intuition Robotics has garnered a stream of accolades and awards for ElliQ's innovative and thoughtful design and the robot's ability to address the specific needs of older adults, including:

-       CES Best of Innovation Honoree - Smart Home category (Jan. 2018)
-       Fast Company Innovation by Design Award Winner - UX category (Sept. 2017)
-       AARP Innovation Champion Award - Social Well-Being category (June 2017)

About Intuition Robotics
Intuition Robotics is the creator of ElliQ™, the Active Aging Companion, which helps older adults stay active and engaged with a proactive social robot that overcomes the digital divide. The company's AI cognitive computing technology, award-winning design, and intuitive interaction models provide a natural way for older adults to reap the benefits of technology without the need to master the tools. The company was founded in 2016 and is based in Israel with offices in California. Intuition Robotics has raised over $20M in funding and is supported by renowned industry experts.

About ElliQ
ElliQ is an AI driven social robot for older adults aimed at reducing social isolation and loneliness by encouraging an active and engaged lifestyle. ElliQ seamlessly connects older adults with family and friends by making interactions with technology simple and intuitive, removing the complexity and frustration. This social companion adapts to the personalities and interests of the senior, recommending content they may enjoy such as news, music, TED talks and cognitive games. Communicating through body language, speech, sounds, light and images, ElliQ also suggests activities in the physical outside world such as taking a walk, medicine reminders or just calling family members.

Intuition Robotics' media kit can be found here.

SOURCE Intuition Robotics