You’ll either love it, or you’ll hate it. That’s the most important thing about the Fribo, a Korean research project.

The Fribo is a black cat-alike construction with an in-built screen that, thanks to sensors and microphones, detects when someone arrives home and then broadcasts that to friends in the user’s list via a Raspberry Pi inside. These friends also have Fribo devices and they can respond to welcome the user home or send them a message.

As I said in the title… slightly creepy because it means that someone’s always “watching”. Not sure I’d like one, and I’m pretty sure it brings home all the perceived privacy concerns of Amazon Alexa or Google Home, but what do I know? It might, as the researchers state, help people who live alone to feel more connected to others.

You can read more on the IEEE website and see it in action below: