Enabot Ebo Max FamilyBot      Price: €600Where To Buy: EnabotDo you ever get the feeling that you are being watched? You know the one, where the hair stands up on the back of your neck and you can feel eyes boring into the back of your head? I do. But, in fairness, that is the function of Enabot’s Ebo Max family robot. The small rolling robot is part companion, part security guard for your home, keeping a watchful eye on things even when you aren’t around. And it does it all while rolling around your home, taking everything in with big, digital eyes that also function as a screen for video calls. With robots, it is always the eyes. Someone decided that giving the Ebo Max huge blue eyes would make it seem less threatening, although you can customise them to whatever makes it feel less like the harbinger of your future doom. Usually with tech, it is the uncanny valley that triggers a sense of unease. With the Enabot Max looking more like a small football crossed with a Disney character, it’s more like a lingering sense of WTF. The eyes follow you around, not like one of the religious pictures that hung on the bedroom wall in my grandmother’s house, but in a more “learning what makes you tick” mode. The robot can answer questions – simple ones, rather than state of the nation or meaning of the universe – role play as an AI assistant, a storyteller, a funny man or a young girl, remind you about schedules or provide a conduit for video calls. As a companion, it learns about you, recognising faces that you register with it, remembering names. It can remind you of important tasks or call a family member in an emergency. You summon it by calling it twice (Ebo, Ebo) and hope for the best. All of that depends on what data you are willing to share with the robot. Ebo has long-term memory and the ability to recognise people so it can learn about you, your life, your hobbies and interests – almost as if it was another member of the family. This is what it is made to do.You can disable and clear the memory, though, if you decide that it knows a little too much for comfort. I’ve also checked out the privacy pledge – mercifully a quick read – that promises to keep your face data on the bot rather than floating in the cloud. Ebo can record as it patrols your house but the footage is saved to the robot’s internal memory or storage card. There is a cloud subscription service but it isn’t necessary for the daily operation of the robot, unless you want remote access to stored footage when the robot is turned off. Initially wary of Ebo – to use my nine-year-old’s early appraisal, “it’s a bit creepy” – the younger members of the family eventually firmly embraced the idea of a robot assistant. On more than one occasion, I found a small child lying on the floor, having a face-to-digital-face conversation with Ebo as if it was a real person. A fascination with Ebo’s call button, located on the top of the robot, meant I had to fend off several video call requests an hour, although that eventually tapered off when the novelty faded. Alerts to notify me that someone was carrying the robot around keep coming thick and fast, though. So far I’ve had to rescue the robot from the slide in the back garden, the TV cabinet, various window sills around the house and the top of the vacuum base station. All were potentially catastrophic fall risks, but the robot has so far managed to remain unscathed. The cat, admittedly, is less keen. Put it into pet companion mode and every time Ebo spots an animal, the Enabot device kicks into play mode, tracking the pet’s movement, mimicking animal noises and recording it for posterity. The latter came in handy when trying to figure out where the cat was hiding in the house, with a carefully positioned docking station that could capture the main thoroughfare to help narrow down the potential bolt-holes. If the cat moved, we knew about it. To say that she would rather Ebo pack up for a new home is putting it mildly. The robot also came in very handy when we were away on holidays. Before going, I set up some patrol paths for it to follow; it was an easy way to figure out if we had left something open or turned on, or to check on any suspicious movement in the house. That was assuming the suspicious movement was downstairs, of course. Like so many robots before it, the Ebo Max has yet to figure out how to tackle stairs effectively. It didn’t always go perfectly, however. It wasn’t uncommon to find the robot marooned away from the dock, slowly winding down its battery, despite the dock never moving position. And the pet recognition feature means the cat is on her last nerve – as was I when it randomly impersonated a wolf howling when I was home alone. GoodAn easily controlled security camera or personal companion, although some of the interactions feel less than natural. There are a few different customisation options too. If you allow it to learn over time, the robot becomes more personal and more useful to you. BadThe big eyes watching your every move are a little unsettling, and the angle of the camera will make the facial recognition element harder for tall people. Plus it occasionally lost its way back to the dock, or got marooned in a difficult spot. It is an expensive addition to your home security arsenal. Everything elseFootage can be stored on a micro SD card. There is the option of a cloud subscription service if you really want to spend extra. Verdict A fun, if pricey, security toy. Another one that has yet to solve the stairs issue, however.