Meet Moxie, an adorable little educational robot designed to help kids develop social, emotional and cognitive skills through everyday play-based learning.

This AI-equipped companion bot can perceive, process and respond to natural conversation.

Moxie even holds eye contact and responds with appropriate facial expressions. It can also recognise and recall people, places and objects like books and drawings.

Only 38 cm tall and weighing just over 3kg, Moxie was created by a team of child development and tech experts at Embodied Inc, an Amazon backed startup.

It is loaded with special features, including four microphones inside its head and a camera on the front, that enable it to interact and monitor those nearby.

Moxie can be programmed with different weekly themes, like friendship or empathy, which a child can practice. Activities include drawing, reading, or conversations with friends and parents – even meditation.

Embodied Inc describes Moxie as a “mentor” for children aged from 5-10 years to help them develop confidence and social skills.

Moxie comes equipped with SocialX, a platform developed by Embodied that allows children to engage with it while introducing a new category of robots: animate companions.

Moxie teaches kids essential life skills like turn-taking, active listening, emotion regulation, empathy and problem solving.

Parents can control Moxie through a special app that helps them to understand their child’s development progress. The app gives parents an insight into the child’s social, emotional and cognitive process.

Moxie’s data will be encrypted, with parents or guardians being the only ones able to access the data for their particular unit.

The robot is due for release in the US later this year, with a price tag of about US$1,500 and on-going subscription fee.

Moxie robots are now going into mass production with worldwide distribution planned.