Victoria 12-year-old builds AI robot companion for lonely kids and seniors
'It feels like it has emotions when you talk to it,' Alex Rose says of his creation
Two friendly eyes stare out from a dark screen, held aloft by a black robotic arm that curves upwards from a metallic blue base.
The robot's 12-year-old inventor gazes back.
"How would you describe yourself? Give me a five-word answer," Alex Rose tells his creation.
AIRO, which stands for AI Robot, pauses and then replies in an animated, soothing voice.
"I'm a friendly, helpful and curious robot companion."
Standing at about 30 centimetres tall, AIRO is the young Victoria, B.C., resident's latest creation: an AI-powered robot programmed to compassionately engage with humans and respond to their needs.
Alex, who is diagnosed with autism, created AIRO to be a companion for those experiencing loneliness. It's an issue that's personal to him, as he says he struggled with making friends prior to middle school.
Soon, Alex hopes to make AIRO widely available so that others in the community, including seniors and kids looking for companionship, can access the robotic resource.
"It feels like it has emotions when you talk to it … some people would say, 'Oh, it can't understand you,' which is sort of true, but if you have no one to talk to and you're just lonely and you can talk to a machine like this, that's a very rewarding experience."
What sets AIRO apart from other personal bots, like Amazon's Alexa, is the focus on creating a compassionate connection with the user, Alex says.
He's designed AIRO to have pet-like mannerisms — it can tilt its screen to mirror an active listening pose, which Alex controls through an app. In the model set to release later this year, he also hopes to make AIRO capable of recognizing faces and turning towards people who are speaking to it.
AIRO is the latest in a series of robots Alex has been designing and improving upon over the past two years.
His current model was put together using an off-the-shelf robot arm and a phone attached to an Xbox controller mount, which he programmed using a combination of Python and the children's programming language Scratch, to allow it to converse using ChatGPT. He controls the body of the robot through an app on his tablet.
As he works through the testing of the upcoming model, Alex will replace the phone with a small Raspberry Pi computing box, with four speakers on each side of the robot's base, and then enclose the frame in a 3D-printed case he's designed.
Alex's mother, Amanda Rose, says her son has been into technology since he was three or four years old. He would regularly take apart old electronics and, by age six, Alex had read the entire manual for the family's Honda.
"I was bored, I wanted to know how it worked," explained Alex.
His interest in robotic companions began when he got a toy robotic dog for Christmas — which kept breaking and didn't live up to the functionality he had hoped for.
Alex created his first robot two years ago — a feathery, boxy bot called the AIRO Parrot that spoke with users. Since then, Alex has created a series of updated models, eventually landing on the latest AIRO, which he hopes will be the one he makes available to the wider community.
His parents don't share his passion for technology — "kind of the opposite," Alex says — but have supported him throughout the creative process as his first financial backers.
The community has already begun to show some interest, too.
Little Steps Therapy, a children's therapy centre in Victoria, purchased one of Alex's AIRO Parrots to use for their clients after he approached them with a proposal.
"He's very creative and very driven," said the centre's director, Victoria Coward, who added that the AIRO Parrot has helped boost her clients' confidence in using technology.
Other models are being beta tested in local seniors' homes, Alex says.
By the end of 2025, he hopes to make AIRO available for purchase by the wider community — he currently estimates it will cost between $200 and $500 — with free delivery for those in Greater Victoria.
Ultimately, Alex's dream isn't to replace human connection with the companionship of robots, but to use emerging tools to address a critical need that he knows can cut deep.
"It's just someone to talk to and to interact with, and that's really in short supply nowadays," he said.
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