The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2024–2026
Mirumi: Yukai's shy bag robot with no AI made strangers smile at CES 2025
A clip-on robot that does nothing but imitate a baby's shy glances: Mirumi hangs on a bag and asks for no tasks, screen or voice.
Yukai Engineering (ユカイ工学)
What it had to solve
Yukai Engineering, the Tokyo studio behind playful robots like Qoobo and Amagami Ham Ham, wanted a CES 2025 product that spreads happiness rather than performs chores. The idea came from its 2024 internal Make-a-Thon, where designers imagined a robotic "yokai" with baby-like qualities.
How it works
Yukai Engineering, the Tokyo robotics studio behind the Qoobo cat-tailed pillow, unveiled Mirumi at CES Unveiled in January 2025: a fluffy, round robot that hangs from a bag strap and turns its head to steal a look at strangers. The studio designed it to recreate the joy of meeting a baby's eyes in public — a small random interaction that lifts a mood. The concept grew out of Yukai's 2024 internal Make-a-Thon, where designers imagined a robotic yokai with baby-like qualities.
Inside the soft shell sit a distance sensor and an inertial measurement unit, so Mirumi knows when someone approaches, when the attached bag moves and when it is touched. Its whole repertoire is movement: it scans curiously when the bag moves, hides its face bashfully when surprised, shakes its head "no" when jiggled and calmly looks around when undisturbed. It makes no sounds, runs about eight hours between charges, and its long arms wrap securely around a purse handle or a wrist.
Yukai deliberately left out AI, screens and chores. Mirumi's job is not to help the wearer but to make everyone around the wearer happier — in the words of a Yukai representative during a CES chat with Engadget, "This is all about making people around you happier." Hands-on writers at the show responded exactly as designed, and by December 2025 the robot was on Kickstarter in grey, pink and ivory, with early-bird pledges from 18,360 yen (about $118) against an expected retail price of $150 and shipments planned for April 2026.
The company positions Mirumi as a companion robot, but one whose benefit mostly lands on bystanders: attached to a commuter's bag, it quietly watches the world and occasionally brightens a stranger's day with a look. As The Verge put it, Mirumi is not overpacked with functionality — and that could be its biggest appeal.
Why it lands
- Restraint was the design: with no AI, no voice and no tasks, the only thing left was a social gesture everyone already understands — a shy glance.
- It inverted the wearable's job: the happiness is aimed at bystanders, not the owner, which makes strangers part of the product.
- A tiny behavioral repertoire — bashful peek, head-shake "no," curious scan — gave a few sensors a personality people eagerly projected onto.
- The bag-charm form rode an existing emotional-toy wave, making the robot easy to carry, show off and talk about.
- Marketing a $118–150 object as pure joy sidestepped the productivity arms race every other AI gadget was fighting.
What it did
Hands-on press at CES 2025 melted: Engadget wrote that Mirumi "stole my heart," and The Verge later called it a unique standout among the show's TVs and robovacs. That attention carried a Kickstarter campaign in December 2025, with early-bird pledges starting at 18,360 yen (about $118) against an expected retail price of $150, and first units planned for April 2026.
What you can take
When a category competes on capability, invert it: cut every function until the robot's only job is making someone else smile — restraint becomes the identity.
Since then
Mirumi was originally planned for a mid-2025 launch, but Yukai waited until early December 2025 to open the Kickstarter campaign, which ran into January 2026. Early-bird pledges started at 18,360 yen (about $118) and later tiers ran to about $140, against an expected retail price of $150; The Verge noted that crowdfunded hardware often slips and that shipments were not expected before April 2026 at the earliest. Yukai continued to frame the robot as pure play — a companion whose usefulness is measured in other people's smiles.
Sources
- This fluffball robot stole my heart at CES 2025
- Mirumi: A furry, babylike robot to steal hearts at CES 2025
- Mirumi the furry companion robot is now available on Kickstarter
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