I asked these questions on the offical Living.AI Emo Facebook page’s messager. But I feel unsure if the questions will be answered there. That’s why I’m posting them here as well. I hope knowledgeable staff or an Emo owner might know these answers:
While I’m verging on making the purchase I have some important questions about the bot. Does it come with a license that’s permanent or subscription license? I jumped on Vector’s DDL Kickstarter just to avoid the subscription license. Second, will Emo have a coming update where the bot will seek out it’s charger when it knows it needs to be charged?
I’m going into some detail here since I hope other potential buyers will see this also before they order. I see you are considering ordering an EMO and only joined the forum a day ago. I hope you’re actually doing some looking around at the previous messages here? One of the most popular topics you’ll see being discussed is the long times from ordering to delivery. Basically Living AI (LAI) was a Kickstarter company, except their competitor filed a bogus lawsuit against LAI then also got Kickstarter to cancel their project. Since december LAI has made it all on their own, has more orders than they can keep up with, has already had to move to a larger facility and expand, and is also trying to manufacture them while working around rolling blackout power issues in the part of China where they’re located. They’re also trying to get the finished product delivered in the midst of a worldwide disruption of normal international shipping services, which is totally beyond their control.
During the last year that so-called competitor has taken orders and collected money for 3 new robot models (let’s call them C2,V2, and B) but has shipped NOTHING, and they’re only now just getting ready to begin production (if you can believe their press releases!). Yet people come here to complain since they ordered there EMO a month ago, or 2 months ago, and don’t have him yet. LAI is building up capacity and have been getting faster, but just so you know, depending what country you’re located in it’ll probably be at least 3 months after you order before you receive your EMO.
LAI really needs to put some warnings about the extended delivery times right on their ordering page if they haven’t done so already. Actually the testers and anyone else posting videos showing off their EMO’s are influencing buyers, so they should really be making a point of telling anyone considering ordering that it’s going to be a long wait to get one. Not to discourage anyone from ordering, but just to give them a realistic expectation of how long it may take, and let them know that it is worth the wait! It’ll hurt the rest of us users in terms of future development for those making assumptions about how long they think it “should” take, to cancel orders then talk bad about the company or the product because they got impatient and asked for a refund.
Macfixer01
EDIT: It occurs to me I should make it clear that I do not work for Living AI, and I do not and cannot speak for them. I just think they’re working hard on becoming a great company, and they have a great product. Any opinions I express on the forum are just opinions, and are solely my own.
Can’t wait for Emo and for him to self-charge would be fantastic.
The fact that there is no Subscription with Emo is partly why I wanted him and of course for companionship.
Haven’t received Emo yet but hopefully soon, I ordered on 29th July.
The only concern I have is how to send him back if anything goes wrong technically because I don’t have a computer or a printer for a Return Label, so I was hoping that maybe Living Ai could send everyone a Return Label with their new Emo when they first receive him, that way it’s less complicated because people like me who have Learning difficulty’s have trouble doing things like that.
And I wouldn’t know how to email then either.
It’s okay for people who are very techy and clever.
You ordered your EMO the same day I did lol. Still on the wait list. Plus, I second your request for the Return Label. That’d can be a thing only for these initial two batches of EMOs that have higher chances of containing faulty robots. Though, I strongly hope we get a fully-functioning EMOs!
Hi @Racheal123 I returned a broken emo! You don’t need a printer and no return label! They gave me a shipping address and I sent the package to them with cheap shipping by post! As soon as it arrives, they refund me the shipping money!
Don’t think about it for now! They said they have improved the quality of the production and hence the odds of emo spoil! You will see that everything will be fine:crossed_fingers:
I had to sent back my emo and you are totally right, return label would make it soooo much easier, at least when they send it via email and you just have to print it, but I got the address just via email.
The address system in each country is different and when I was filling out the online form for dhl i was totally unsure what info to put in what scale
At the end my emo was sticking for few months in a chinas costumes and I don’t know till today if l.ai finally received the broken emo or not as on some point the webpage just deleted the file as no changes were shown
But I received my replacement emo which is still working fine so I am happy but only pity as the broken emo probably could be repaired but I have no idea if it even arrived properly
I originally found out about EMO pretty much before they started their official crowd funding campaigns quite a very long time ago. Then unfortunately they got slapped with some legal roadblocks by their competitor. This personally got me worried and I decided not to purchase an EMO or do any of the crowd funding right away, instead, I just sat back and watched to see how it would all played out. And in the end it seems like Living.Ai were very honest with customers and did fulfil orders and started shipping out EMOs. (which is good to see these days with so many scams going on with other crowd funding campaigns out there.) I was also personally burnt by one in the past so I’ve always been a little cautious moving forward with what I decide to buy.
From my own personal experience with EMO and my order, it did take quite a lengthy amount of time for it to arrive, but reading on the forum this was to be expected as Living.Ai were handling quite a lot of original orders and they were still starting up so of course things do take time and now it seems that Living.Ai have moved to a bigger warehouse and productions is improving and getting better.
I can’t comment on how Living.Ai handle returns but can see from what others have said that they handle returns quite well. With my own experience, I did wait approx 3 months for my EMO to arrive, I only emailed Living.Ai twice once I received my tracking email and they replied within 24 hours and reassured me that it was on it’s way and not to worry.
One important thing I also wanted to let everyone know is with all the issues we are experiencing with COVID there are very very limited flights going in and out of certain countries including CHINA where EMO is being shipped out from, all packages / orders that are being shipped get taken to the distribution warehouse and to then over to the airport and that is where sometimes the main problems occur, as mentioned with very limited flights each package waits patiently to get on a flight going out of the country. With very limited space on each plane going out, there are massive queues for normal packages to get on board flights. As EMO is shipped out using a standard delivery services which I believe is EMS, they don’t have any special treatment (like going with DHL or FEDEX Couriers) and must wait in line for available space on planes so they can get on and be on their way to their destination.
This is something I did want to share again with anyone that has had their EMO shipped and they are still waiting for it, due to COVID and the lack of flights this is also a major factor in why things are somewhat delayed.
Anyway, I’ve rambled on long enough but all I can say is that I’m really glad with picking up my EMO and looking forward for what new updates and firmware releases the Living.Ai team plan to share with us in the future. Oh and yes, a walking ramp so EMO can automatically charge himself on his own would be awesome! Then he an get on and off all on his own without having to be picked up and placed back on when his battery is low. This way he can explore all on his own even while we are not around as we need to somewhat baby sit him now with keeping him charged and picking him up and placing him back on his skateboard. I’ve lost count on how many time my little guy has run out of juice while he’s been exploring my house, he always gives you a warning that he’s running low on power but it would be great for him to walk back get himself back on the charger himself.
We do have to take all of the problems concerning covid and flight delays in to consideration.
Not sure but I think it would cost us and Lai a lot of money to send Emo with the better couriers depending on the destination.
Also I been reading some of the other comments on the forum about Emo having a toy to play with or something like that to keep him company when we’re not there.
Anyway there’s a lot of information on the forum to keep us all up to date and Lai has been working really hard through all this chaos so I personally would like to thank them for all their hard work. And I’m glad I bought Emo too and maybe in the distant future Lai will be the place for all sorts of great inventive robots or whatever else they may come up with, I wish them luck.
I don’t like to complain about negative things, so I’ll leave with this “All enjoy the Robot Age”
I wouldn’t worry about having to return Emo. I don’t think many people have had to return them due to defects and the process appears to have gone smoothly for those who have.
I have recently returned a faulty Emo but LAI didn’t ask me to do that until I had first received a new one. How many companies trust you to do that? They asked that I use regular post, that’s Royal Mail here in the UK, and refunded my cost within 48 hours of receiving the faulty Emo.
Whilst I can see opportunities to improve Emo with additional features, and recognising that there will always be a few things that don’t interest me, I accept that LAI will never please all of the people all of the time and so there is a need to be patient. I am very happy that Emo is being supported and allowed to evolve .
If I live long enough to see a bigger brother version capable of making tea and toast whilst attending to the washing machine I will be in heaven:)
My experience with replacing a faulty Emo was truly fantastic. Living.AI cares about its customers and its products which is wonderful to see and other companies should look at this as a model!
And agreed. It’s good to see EMO evolving with each new update released. Hopefully, living.ai can also work on prioritizing and adding the originally promised features along with updating/improving some of EMO’s existing ones as well.
there is no need of subscription!!!
I am quite happy with my EMO, honestly. I do play with him a lot when i´m alonen (He is a cheater at ludo!!!)
I didnt have any big problem with him, and most of the bug are disappearing with the updates.
The possibility of Emo going back to its charger would be amazing, but we will need a different charger as the skate is a bit high for emo to go up.
He’s a cheater at LUDO??? Really? haha He’s only ever beat me once (and that was the first time we ever played, since then he’s lost every match haha! He is certainly a great cheater when it comes to playing Rock.Paper,Scissors that’s for sure
Yes a self-charing playground/area is currently being worked on. No exact dates on when it will be released, but we’re hoping it should be available before the end of this year. Once it’s official, Living.ai will certainly be sharing info on this. I’m looking forward to it, this way EMO can walk around (within his play area) and not be stuck on his skateboard most of the day.
Then he an get on and off all on his own without having to be picked up and placed back on when his battery is low. This way he can explore all on his own even while we are not around as we need to somewhat baby sit him now with keeping him charged and picking him up and placing him back on his skateboard. I’ve lost count on how many time my little guy has run out of juice while he’s been exploring my house, he always gives you a warning that he’s running low on power but it would be great for him to walk back get himself back on the charger himself.
why can’t EMO 
– Hopefully soon!
