In a nursing residence in Shenzhen, China, a loud bang startles an aged resident. In response, an AI-enabled robotic that appears like a panda cub slowly turns in the direction of her.
“It’s okay – did that frighten you?” the robotic asks her in a mild tone. After a short pause, the aged girl pats the robotic gently and smiles.
This “cyber panda”, named An’an, represents a breakthrough in emotional synthetic intelligence.
Emotional support robots named An’an
Developed via a partnership between Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) and Mind with Heart Robotics Co. Ltd., An’an is designed to present therapeutic support for aged individuals, particular training college students, and people going through emotional stress.
Award-winning innovation
The mission just lately gained worldwide status on the CES Innovation Awards 2026 in Las Vegas. Out of three,600 world entries, An’an was named an honouree within the Artificial Intelligence class. It is the one “electronic pet” on the planet to obtain a CES award.
Active empathy
What units An’an aside is its means to transfer past easy emotion recognition to “active understanding.”
An’an features a world-leading “multimodal empathetic dialogue” dataset. This structured assortment of information trains the robotic’s AI to perceive and reply to human feelings via analysing various kinds of enter it receives concurrently. The robotic can “see”, “hear” and “feel” human emotional cues – like vocal tones and facial expressions – to perceive an individual’s mind-set. It additionally consists of tens of 1000’s of prolonged conversations about household, training, social interplay, and different key eventualities.
These numerous inputs, together with the database, permit it hint attainable causes of an emotion and information An’an in its response. For instance, An’an can recognise that an aged particular person’s silence would possibly stem from loneliness, or a toddler’s restlessness could also be attributable to a chaotic atmosphere.
By drawing on contextual inferences, An’an can proactively produce human-like empathetic responses. It would possibly play nostalgic music when it senses a resident has been sitting listlessly for too lengthy, or offer mild phrases of encouragement to a toddler when it detects frustration.
“An’an’s warmth is personalised,” says Professor Jionglong Su, of the School of AI and Advanced Computing (AIAC) at XJTLU Entrepreneur College (Taicang) and the chief of the XJTLU analysis crew. “It builds a unique emotional profile for each user, refining its communication over time.”
Joining forces
The robotic is the flagship product of a joint laboratory that XJTLU and Mind with Heart Robotics established in June 2025. The lab leverages the companions’ strengths. With a powerful analysis basis in AI algorithms and main computing architectures, XJTLU focuses on robotics, clever notion, bionic mechanism modelling, and human-robot interplay. Mind with Heart Robotics – a pioneer in creating biomimetic AI robots, which emulate pure organisms – handles engineering, {hardware} integration, and mass manufacturing.
Dr Kang Dang of XJTLU says that the partnership between the corporate and XJTLU’s School of AI and Advanced Computing (AIAC) serves as a bridge for expertise, with college students tackling real-world engineering challenges via internships whereas firm engineers achieve educational insights on the college.
“This ultimately fosters the integration of industry, academia, and research,” he says.
The XJTLU crew: entrance, from left: Dr Mian Zhou, Professor Jionglong Su, Dr Kang Dang. Back, from left: Dr Tianming Bai, Dr Chong Li, Dr Zhengyong Jiang
Global enlargement
The mission will quickly transfer into mass manufacturing. While the US is the first marketplace for robots like An’an, enlargement is underway within the EU and Australia.
“We are partnering with several Australian hospitals to launch early clinical trials for patients with dementia,” Dr Dang says.
Despite its refined AI, the creators emphasise that An’an will not be a alternative for human connection.
“An’an is not designed to replace human love and companionship, but to serve as a powerful enabler — one that amplifies the impact of professional caregivers and fills the gaps in emotional support,” Dr Zhou says.
By Jiayan Ji
Edited by Tamara Kaup
Photos courtesy of Jionglong Su
Translated by Xueqi Wang