The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Meet Jennie from TomBot: The Robotic Puppy Revolutionizing Dementia Care at CES Show 2025

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

Meet Jennie from TomBot: The Robotic Puppy Revolutionizing Dementia Care at CES Show 2025 TomBot Website: tombot.com About the Guest(s): Tom Stevens is the CEO and Co-founder of TomBot Incorporated, a Santa Clarita, California-based company specializing in robotic animals and digital health solutions. With a robust background in high-tech and startups, Tom and his co-founders previously built one of the world's largest litigation automation companies before a successful exit. Tom's current venture was inspired by his personal experience with his mother's Alzheimer's, motivating him to create robotic companions for individuals with dementia and other mental health challenges. Episode Summary: In this riveting episode of The Chris Bos Show, host Chris Vos explores the intersection of technology and healthcare with Tom Stevens, CEO of TomBot Incorporated. Broadcasting from an imagined bunker in Maine, Chris delves into Tom's groundbreaking work in developing "Jennie," a robotic Labrador retriever designed to support seniors suffering from dementia, cognitive impairments, and other mental health challenges. Tom shares personal stories that fueled his passion for bridging the gap in the market with lifelike robotic companions. This episode offers an in-depth look at how TomBot is revolutionizing digital healthcare with their pioneering robotic companion, Jennie. Key topics include the design and functionality of Jennie, the technical expertise from Jim Henson's Creature Shop, and the broader impact on emotional health and therapy. Listeners learn about the rigorous research backing TomBot's technology, its capabilities like sensory interaction and autonomous behaviors, and the company's strategic goals at CES to expand market reach and attract investors. This engaging discussion promises to deepen understanding of robotic applications in healthcare and the transformative potential for those struggling with isolation and mental health issues. Key Takeaways: TomBot's Jennie, a robotic Labrador retriever, is engineered to provide companionship to seniors with dementia and other mental health challenges, mimicking lifelike behaviors. Emotional attachments to realistic robotic pets can significantly reduce stress, anxiety, and the need for certain medications in seniors. The design of Jennie involved collaboration with Jim Henson's Creature Shop to create robotics that stimulate emotional bonds through visual and behavioral realism. TomBot is leveraging CES 2025 to showcase Jennie's capabilities, building both consumer and business-to-business connections while seeking investment. Senior care facilities could greatly benefit from adopting robotic companions like Jenny to enhance patient care and reduce social isolation. Notable Quotes: "We've teamed up with Jim Henson's Creature Shop to build what we believe to be the world's most realistic robotic animals." "Our first puppy will be an FDA medical device designed to treat the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia." "Humans like to suspend disbelief, and even though we know Jenny is a robot, we still want to engage with her as if she were real." "We're scientifically designed to stimulate emotional attachment through the realism of appearance, texture, and behaviors." "Our goal is to replace emotional support animals and assist those who benefit from companionship but cannot accommodate a real pet."

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, the shrill lady sings it. That makes it official. The Chris Voss Show is now live on broadcasting from the Chris Voss Show studios,

wherever the hell we are. I don't know. I think we're in a bunker in Maine at this point. I don't know why I picked Maine. It just came right off the top of my thing. But it makes no sense, which probably makes sense in some way or shape or form. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing show on today. We're going to be talking with someone who's going to be bringing their company to CES, Eureka Park.

We're going to be doing a lot of CES interviews of CES boothers, boothies at the CES show. So stay tuned for that. We do it every year for the last billion years. We'll even have the CES Gary Shapiro, CES CSCO, CTA on the show. There's a lot of C's going on with this whole operation. But we're going to move down to the T's. We have Tom Stevens of Tombot, who's going to be on the show with us today. He will be displaying at the big CES show in Las Vegas in 2025.

And we're going to be talking about his thing and what he does and all this cool thing about a robotic labrador retriever puppy named jenny so the company name is tombot incorporated it's a santa clarita california-based robotic animal and digital health solutions company the first product is the robotic labradorador, which you mentioned for earlier, and it was designed as a companion for the 300-plus million seniors worldwide suffering from dementia and mild cognitive impairment. Probably me too as well. As well as adults and children dealing with mental health challenges such as stress, anxiety, loneliness, autism, and PTSD.

It's exceptionally lifelike. It really is. We've been sitting in the green room playing. And fully autonomous. Jenny flawlessly mimics the sounds, movements, and interpersonal interactions of a live puppy. It hasn't peed on me yet, but we'll ask if it does that. Puppies, you gotta love them. With 7,000 pre-orders scheduled for 2025 delivery, Tombot will unveil its next generation of robotic companions at CS 20 2025 complete with remote safety and patient health monitoring platforms Ginny will ultimately receive FDA approval as a certified medical device

welcome the show Tom how are you I'm wonderful Chris thank you so much for having me and Tom what's your official title there at tomba I am CEO and co-founder of tomba I kind of figured since so it's your official title there at Tombot? I am CEO and co-founder of Tombot. I kind of figured since your name's in the title there. So give us any dot coms. Where do you want people to get to know you better on the interwebs, please? Sure. Our main website is tombot.com, T-O-M-B-O-T dot com.

Through that website, you can find all of our links to our social media handles. We have lots of videos on youtube we're on instagram facebook and you can hear and see jenny there as well jenny's getting riled up she's on the show she's she wants to she wants in on the action so you're also going to be venetian hall g in down in eureka park the booth 62034 620 you're at the CES show, give them a shout out, walk by, say hello. Check out Jenny because Jenny wants to get on the show now. So Tom, give us a 30,000 overview of what Jenny is about. Sure.

So my background is I've been in the high-tech industry for the last 30 plus years. My two Tombaugh co-founders and I built a prior startup into one of the world's largest litigation automation companies. We were successfully acquired, which gave me the freedom to think about other things. Unfortunately, that same year, my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's dementia. And of any decisions I had to make on her behalf, by far the worst was realizing I had to take away her dog for safety reasons. She was really unhappy with me. I looked around for substitutes for live animal companions. She hated everything that I brought home.

And so it was at that time I realized that there is a very large gap in the market that launched me on what became a multi-year research and education journey culminating a master's degree from Stanford University. And along the way, I learned that my mom's story is shared by over 300 million seniors with dementia or pre-dementia mild cognitive impairment, and quite literally half the planet, about 1 billion out of the 2 billion households and we launched tombot to be in service to those people i think we dropped down a little bit again on the sound there oh sorry about that no problem so we found we it's a basically you guys have created probably the most lifelike dog i've ever seen in a robotic autonomous animal and it i mean i mean, I've been watching it here in the show, in the green room. We've been talking about it.

If you watch this on YouTube, I know most people consume the podcasts and audio, but if you go to YouTube, you can see the dog and it really looks like a real dog and it behaves like a real dog on its own. It's like head moves and it does a lot of the mimicking that a normal dog would do. The tail wagging and it's kind of fooled my brain a couple of times where I'm like, wait, is that a real dog or is that a fake dog? Well, it turns out that it was a very important thing. So our first puppy, as you mentioned, will be an FDA medical device. She's actually designed to treat the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia and reduce the need for certain

medications, including psychotropic medications. But the reason why these products work in the first place is they stimulate emotional attachment. And we're fortunate in that we're standing on over 40 years of peer-reviewed studies that show that where a senior with dementia can form a robust emotional attachment to an object, traditionally that's been a human baby doll or a stuffed animal. That senior gets a great deal of relief from those behavioral and psychological symptoms and a corresponding reduction in need for the psychotropics. The problem is very few seniors, including my mother, care for the traditional objects. Research on robotic animals show they significantly outperform the traditional objects and on the other end of the spectrum are prohibitively expensive robots.

This whole space was invented in the early 2000s by a Japanese research institute. They created a robotic seal by the name of PARO, P-A-R-O. And it's a good robot, but it costs over $6,000. Most senior care facilities can't afford one, let alone individuals like my mother who need one for themselves in order to form that emotional bond. We conducted multiple rounds of customer studies with over 700 seniors with dementia.

And of the many things that we learned through that, the biggest takeaways were around realism. Realism, first of all, objects which they're already familiar, puppies, kittens, as opposed to wild animals or fictitious creatures. And then secondly, the more realistic, the better in terms of appearance, texture, and behaviors. We teamed up with Jim Henson's Creature Shop to do all of our artistic design. And with their help, we're building what we believe to be are the world's most realistic robotic animals, scientifically designed to stimulate emotional attachment. And then once in place, we become a unique platform for monitoring those seniors for safety and health. So you can see how they're doing and stuff. Can you see through the eyes at all by yet? Or is that maybe a future? A future. For our first product, a senior with dementia,

by definition, is fully disabled. And that person needs a caretaker. Typically, it's an unpaid family member to make sure that they're safe and healthy. And so we didn't need it for that. We will have that in future models for someone who's living independently, still like mom lives on the next county over, and I don't get to see her as much as I'd like to, and I'm starting to worry more about her. So a little more safety monitoring there. But our first model is designed to monitor for sundowning syndrome,

which is one of the most common set of symptoms associated with dementia. So you have interactive sensors built into it that are touch sensors all over the body. They'll react to, you know, you normally pet your dog and stuff. Voice commands, it's got voice activation software, real puppy sounds from a 12 year old labrador it really does it fools me and it's sitting there and i know it's fake but it's it's i mean it's doing little barks and you're it does software updates it's connected to an app and it's rechargeable you know i i was talking to my mom the other day and i was like you know people live longer if they have a pet.

I don't know why. Maybe it's because you got something to take care of. Maybe it's the unconditional love. Maybe it's, you know, I mean, just, it seems like when we take care of something in the universe, the universe goes, okay, well, they're, they're working on something for us. You know, it seems like when you don't have any use left, you're not doing anything. They're like, yeah, let's move them along. And I think that's true. And a lot of people, you know, they don't find something to do after they retire. They tend to die very quickly. But if they find a purpose, then they do it.

My sister has MS. She's in a care center. But she can't have a dog in a care center. And so this would be perfect for her. She's not fully there. She may actually think it's a real dog i know my mom you know she's she's older and she's fine cognitively but you know i mean she doesn't really have a companion you know she's got her kids but we're busy doing things

sometimes and you know i was suggesting the other day i said you should get a pet but you know she's got asthma and a little bit of allergies. And so maybe a pet isn't the best thing for her. And of course, cleanup and all the things you got to deal with with pets sometimes. But just kind of having that whole, I think if you have that mnemonic or whatever sort of attachment to where you're used to dogs, it just plays on that sort of thing. That sound about right? I think you're absolutely right. Human beings have been selectively breeding dogs for thousands of years to imitate the

traits in human babies that cause us to want to take care of babies. And so dogs are actually manipulating us the same way that human babies are manipulating us and causing the care for them. And in the process, it's stimulating positive changes in our brain's neurochemistry. And while it's a complex cocktail of neurochemicals, what's thought to be hardest at work is oxytocin. Oxytocin, sometimes referred to as the love drug, is known to reduce stress, reduce anxiety. It's fundamental to emotional bond formation, and it's a highly effective pain reliever. So it actually makes us feel really good. Oxytocin is seen in mothers right after they give birth to a baby. They get a

massive dose of oxytocin to help them forget about that terrible pain that they just went through and focus all their attention on that very needy baby. Dogs are stimulating the same neural pathways. Specifically, puppies are stimulating the same neural pathways. And in doing so, make us feel really good. But I think, Chris, what you were talking about is giving us a purpose. That is also instrumental in improving quality of life and potentially even extending quality of life. That dog is like so amazing.

I mean, its head movements. I mean, I've had four Siberian Huskies now. And then as a child, I think we had a couple puppies. I mean, it's so lifelike in its movement, its head and how it looks around. It moves its ears, moves his tail. Like it's freaking me out, man. Cause I'm just like, my brain goes, that's a real dog. And you know, there it is turning its head one way to the other. And it still has the active, it's got the bark.

And once I hear that baby puppy bark, you know, my brain goes, take care of the dog. I know what's going on. You know, you know know there's something about a puppy that i like how it turns its head you know how dogs do when they're trying to listen to you and figure out what you're what you're talking to but i can see how this can really help somebody especially in dementia you know they may not even be aware it's a it's not a real dog maybe but you know they'll you know it pick it it really picks up a lot of those sort of reactionary things like you talked about where I immediately go, oh, that's a real dog. I need to pet it and all that good stuff.

It's an excellent point. she's better than we originally thought she was going to have to be. But to consistently stimulate and re-stimulate that emotional attachment, it has to be engaging enough to motivate them to do it. And they need to want to care for the robot. They have to care about its well-being, keep it company, you know, give it love and have it love them back. And through that engagement, continually re-stimulating our our neural pathways she agrees she wants attention she doesn't like it when i ignore her the but one of the one of the keys to to this and it goes to your point about maybe they might know or maybe might not

know that it's a real dog we were concerned about that early in our studies for ethical reasons because we didn't want to say, okay, here's this real puppy, take care of this real puppy. Rather, we wanted to introduce the puppy as a robot and see how they reacted to it. And human beings are highly empathetic creatures. We like to immerse. If you can imagine the last movie or perhaps something on television where you were either particularly happy or sad, or maybe even a little scared or startled, you weren't really there, but you chose to immerse in that. And we like doing that. That's something that's very natural for us. And the same thing with the puppy. We like to suspend disbelief, even though we know that it's a puppy. We like to suspend disbelief, even though

we know that it's a robot. We like to pretend that it's real. And it turns out that seniors with dementia, unless they're very late stage, also know that it's a robot and prefer that it's a robot. Peak animal or peak pet ownership rates are in our 50s and then declined by about 50% per decade after that. Once again, for reasons of burden of care, health adversity, costs, and so forth. Sometimes people lose a pet and don't want to replace that pet because they don't want to grieve for the loss of another family member. So they actually know that it's a robot and they prefer that it's a robot in most cases, but they still want to suspend disbelief. And one of the critical factors for us was being able to design behaviors that are, first of all, very lifelike,

but also non-repetitive. With many of the mechanical objects out there, within about 60 seconds, you've seen 100% of what they're capable of doing. Part of our IP is that we have the potential for unlimited categories of behaviors and unlimited behaviors within a given category. So even though there's always a finite number of them that's on the robot, they'll never perceive repetition. And through software updates, we'll continue to expand and improve on the performance of the robot. Will you use a shoe every now and then and pee on my floor? I mean, that's about as realistic as I can get. One of our early studies, an elderly gentleman said,

does it poop batteries? It doesn't poop batteries, but it does run on batteries. It's kind of funny. You know, you've got to replace them. It's like it shoots out the ones that are used. I think my Elon Musk car does that, my silver truck. Yeah, it's a horrible truck. You're right, Jenny.

But, you know, you mentioned one thing. I remember years ago I did a real estate sale of a home for an elderly couple, which is funny because I'm the elderly one now. But back then I was young and they, they, I think their cat had just died or something. And I was like, Oh, you know, that's unfortunate. You know, you're probably going to get another one. They're like, no, that's it. We've had, I think they had 10 animals over their lifetime and their marriage. And they're like, Chris, we can't, we're just so over the pain and the grieving. And so, well, you know, I can't imagine my life without my dogs. You know, I mean, I, I used to, my, my, my one dog used to sleep with me all the time.

She always sleep up next to my back and she's big Husky. So she keep me warm. She to sleep with me all the time. She'd always sleep up next to my back. And she's a big husky, so she'd keep me warm. She'd cuddle with me. She was my cuddler. And when I would travel in hotels and do shows like CS Show and other places south by southwest, I'd have trouble sleeping at night because I didn't have her cuddling with me. And I didn't have my dogs around me. I was just so used to being, I'm like, I'm alone.

This is weird. And so I can't imagine my life without dogs. But, you know, there may come a time, like I mentioned, my sister's in a care center. There's no way you could have animals in there. But, you know, having the comfort of an animal and, you know, I mean, every time that your dog makes noises or barks, it sparks my brain to do that whole reactive caretaker thing. You know, even petting something that appears to be a dog, you know, you give comfort to your animal. You're like, hey, pet you, and, you know, scrub them by in the ears and interact with them a little bit. You know, it sets off all those things in the brain that you're just like,

it's real. Exactly. And once again, we like to suspend disbelief. One of the early anecdotes I had traveling with this Jenny, I was traveling on an airplane and I would bring her on the airplane and she'd be powered on and, you know, people would want to know all about it. I was sitting in my airplane seat talking to somebody about her and petting her. Every time she moves, she stimulates me to walk with her. I know exactly what's happening inside her. I know what all the technology looks like. I know how the software's been programmed. I get it, but it still works that magic on you. Once again, for seniors with dementia or folks like your sister, children with autism, people who otherwise live alone and are at risk of social isolation, severe loneliness, just having a sense of presence is a lot, but it has to be something they actually choose. And that's really where the science came in, in understanding what this had to turn out to be something they actually choose. And that's really where the science came in,

in understanding what this had to turn out to be. And it's amazing it does that because I've seen your video of the skeletal, you know, the hardware that's inside it, sans the fur and all that stuff and the stuffing. And yeah, it's just, I mean, it just looks like a piece of steel sort of thing. But you can suspend. So what are you guys trying to achieve at CES? I noticed there's some buy shares in Tombaugh. There's some investor tabs on your website.

Tell us what's up with that. Two things. First and foremost, we're trying to expand our customer base. We're both a B2C, business to consumer, and B2B, business to business company. Our seniors with dementia, about 83% of them here in the United States live at home and are cared for by an unpaid family member, such as a spouse or a daughter or daughter-in-law, something like that. And so we have over 7,000 families that have pre-ordered the robot and are waiting for delivery. We'd love to have more of them. We're also a B2B company, senior care living facilities, whether it's assisted living, memory care, rehabilitation homes, behavioral health institutes, and hospitals. We are designed to help treat these symptoms when

seniors with dementia and others with severe mental health issues or physical health issues find their way into short-term and long-term acute care settings. And so we will be working with some of the largest here of these organizations here in the nation that do clinical studies to help demonstrate not only the basic science, but looking at specific outcomes like improved health experiences, reduced lengths of stay and things of that sort. CES first and foremost is really just attracting attention to Tombaugh, trying to build more awareness to what we're doing.

And then also, as you mentioned, we're a hardware company. We're always raising money. We've raised over $10 million to date. Our current round is a $3.5 million round, and we're hoping to close this as quickly as possible. That funding will get us the remaining money that we need to get us across the finish line and get to cash flow positive, after which time we'll raise a much larger round of funding to scale sales, marketing, production, as well as begin research and development on our next products.

I noticed that eight days left on TomPond Invest. Now is that, this is on PickMe crowdfunding? That is exactly right. So we have a two-tiered, we made a decision a few years ago, and this turned out to be an excellent decision to encourage our customers to also be investors in the company.

They're the people that understand the need most and are the ones that stand the most benefit from the healthcare aspects of this. Should also have an opportunity to benefit from a financial standpoint. So this is our third round of crowdfunding we've done. We have close to a thousand investors across the three campaigns. This particular campaign is two-tier in terms of pricing. For people that participate before the end of this calendar year, so the end of December 31st, 2024, get a 15% discount off the share price. They're still welcome to participate after the first of the year, as long as we're still raising

money, but it will be at a higher price. But we're also raising from accredited investors. So it's a minimum of, through our crowdfunding campaign, it's a minimum of $249 investment. Accredited investors who wish to invest directly with us, it's a minimum of $25,000. Between the two fundraising strategies, we hope that to add up to $3 a half million. We're doing quite well. We have over two and a half million of that already either hard committed or penciled in. And so we're hoping to close all of this up sometime in January. There you go. You guys have a leadership team that is a large prior exit in high tech.

So you've done this before. Exactly. Not only have we have the experience running businesses, we have experience resolving disputes among ourselves. That's probably the bigger challenge, like any marriage. But seriously, we, this is, we're, we're the leadership team that really occupies three different areas of, of necessary expertise. I come from the business side, product innovation, marketing, financial management. I have another partner who functions as our chief technology officer, and our third

partner is our chief operating officer. And between the three, we've got virtually all the bases covered, but we have more team members, and we've had as many as 21 people working on the robot at a given time between internal and external. And so it's a lot of tech. There's a lot to do, a huge diversity of expertise required to bring this to market. But we're getting close. You know, my sister, she's confined to a wheelchair, so she can't move around. She can't pick things up. But this looks like it could easily sit on her lap.

Exactly. Let me, if I may, I'll put this young lady aside for a second and let me show you what she looks like without her fur and cosmetics on. So this is what the inside of the robot looks like. This is actually our Alpha 1 robot. We'll be exhibiting our Alpha 2, so more evolved than this one at CES. But designed to lay comfortably on somebody's lap, weigh about six pounds. The underside of the robot's flat, so it lays comfortably across your legs or on a bed next to you or on a table or chair, somewhere where you can remain in close proximity to the puppy so you can interact with it constantly. There are five mechanical subsystems

in the robot. First of all all the mouth opens and closes but not just open and close a lot of fine expressiveness as dogs are able to do the eyes open and close the eyebrows lift this turns out to be very important for establishing and maintaining emotional attachment and part of our ip in the product. The head and neck, that great range of motion that dogs are known for, but also the fine expressiveness, you know, being able to give you that little cute, you know, I don't really understand what you're saying, but I'm trying really hard. And then, of course, the tail wags. And as you mentioned, covered with sensors, she can feel how and where she's being touched. She can tell the difference between a simple touch, a slow caress, vigorous pet, and being held.

She responds to voice commands, a large list of voice commands. We come with a smartphone app that allows for a number of configuration settings or changes, including renaming the robot, and then once named, she'll only respond to that given name. Oh, really? It responds to the name oh yeah absolutely so she can feel herself being moved and so she's picked up she knows not to squirm risk being dropped she has a light sensor so if it's dark in the room she knows not to bark and a variety of other sensors to help her gather information from her environment, make an inference as to what that might mean,

and then exhibit a behavior that's appropriate to that context. And once again, this is a minimum viable product for a senior with dementia. However, lots of people with other use needs have preordered it. I'm going to get one so that when I travel to hotels and I have my dog to cuddle with me. We actually have an investor who's an ER doctor, and she called us up saying that, you know, I used to have dogs, but my travel just doesn't allow for it between my hours and my travel. I need this because I'm terrified of flying. I have to fly. And so one investor suggested that we have puppies in kiosks

at airports. If people pick it up at one end of the flight and then drop it off at the other. That's brilliant. I mean, you see these people losing on flights nowadays, and maybe if they had a dog to kind of calm down a little bit and maybe get off the meth or whatever they're on. Exactly. And the airlines hate emotional support animals. Real service dogs are important, and they support that. We've talked to a few unofficially, and they've said, please make emotional support animals go away. It's a burden for us.

We have people bringing chickens and llamas. That's crazy. It's basically the E eureka stand sort of airlines these days so then you know i don't bathe once a week anyway you know me on your airline i don't i bathe people don't write me it's a joke at least once every four days or something i don't know but to know having that dog i would even you know i i get mental over air travel i i hate the tsa i hate you know all i want to do is get rich enough in life so I never have to fly commercial ever again. That's the whole goal.

I don't care. I don't care about the money. I just don't want to have to fly commercial ever again. And just the lines and the, you just feel like you're on a Greyhound bus in the sky, mostly. And, you know, having one of those on the on the flight would definitely help me not want to lose my freaking mind sometimes yeah and yeah we hope that we hope that we can do that very soon as well investors can take a look at your website see what they want to do there people can come by the booth check you guys out at the big eureka park anything

more we need to know about the product before we move along? I think that probably the thing is that we started with a Labrador Retriever puppy for fairly convenient reasons. One is it's been the most popular dog in America for the last several decades. Actually just got knocked off the top spot by the French Bulldog during COVID. And the reason being is that French bulldogs don't need to move. Take it out to go to the restroom a couple of times a day, and it's perfectly happy sitting around the rest of the time where labs have a lot of energy they need to move. So the French bulldog is appropriate for an urban dweller. But they also come naturally in four different colors, the yellow, which you see here, they come chocolate, black, and there's a pale chocolate that's referred to as silver, but it's that bluish gray that you see in a Lymorander.

And that fur on the Lab with the longer fur is really beautiful on the Lab puppy. So we'll be able to offer some options, but we'll come out in the future with other breeds. And at some point, not too too soon we'll start working on a cat oh people love cats too i don't know why but no people have cats the data was about 70 30 about 70 of those that we surveyed either strongly preferred a dog or were indifferent and then 30 strongly preferred a cat so just following numbers, we began with a puppy. Cats are, from a technical standpoint, cats will be challenging for us too because they have unique animation capabilities that we're happy to start with

with something that's a little bit more straightforward. But if we want to serve as many people as possible, we need to offer both. I think it's a great product. I think it's great. I mean, it really is. My sister, you know, suffers from so much loneliness. You see the people in the care centers, they suffer from loneliness. There's, you know, she's suffering dementia, so she's not always there. But, you know, just having a puppy you could cuddle with or sit in your lap, you know, and,

you know, I have Huskies, so they blow coat twice a year. Pretty much the whole dog worth of fur. You know, I mean, the cleanup's a nightmare, and you can't have that in care centers and stuff. And just, you know, her having something to do would be so great. So, Tom, I think it's a wonderful product. Give us a final pitch out as we go out. Tell people where they can go on the dot-coms and all that good stuff. Thank you, Chris, for having me again. Real pleasure to be on your show.

You can reach us at tombot.com and if you happen to be in Las Vegas in January and you're going to come to the CES show, please do come visit us at the Venetian. We'll be in Eureka Park, booth number 62034. And of course, we're available

across all their typical media channels at Tombot or Tombot Robotics. And please reach out and say hi. We love hearing from you and love to hear your ideas about how to make the product better. Thank you again. Thank you. And thanks for helping out dementia patients and all those people in care centers. I mean, they're so lonely. And so being able to have something like this can, and I think it will help their brains, you know, help stimulate their brains. And we talk a lot on the show with brain scientists and psychologists and stuff. And stimulating that brain and different things that you can do can help enhance the quality of life and longevity. And sometimes

it can kind of help bring them back a little bit. Yeah. All the more power to you. So thank you very much, Tom, for coming to the show. Be sure to check them out. You can go to where they'll be at Eureka Park. I had their deal you up. Do you remember the booth number off the top of your head? I think we gave it at the beginning of the show. 62034.

Check them out. Eureka Park down there in the basement of the Venetian. Yeah. If you can't remember that, we're grouped in Eureka Park with the digital health groups. And we're prominently located. So if you venture by there, you won't be able to miss us. Just listen for the barks.

Thank you very much, Tom. Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschristmas, youtube.com, 4chesschristmas, christmas1, the TikTok,

and all those crazy places on the internet. If you get a chance, watch the video. It's freaking me out. It's slash Chris Foss. Chris Foss won the TikTok and he had all this crazy place. If you get a chance, watch the video. It's freaking me out. It's totally uncanny valley. I believe this dog is real because I've been around my dog so much. And it's just bark and it's movement and it's eyes. You're just like, hey, it's real.

Like I say, I might get one for when I travel. That way I don't go insane. Anyway, thanks for tuning in, everyone. Watch for our continuing coverage of booths and vendors that are showing at CES. And watch for Gary Shapiro, who will do his annual appearance on the show. I think it's obligated to him by now, but he'll have his new book out as well. Be good to each other. Stay safe.

We'll see you guys next time. That should have us out.