Meet Paro, an adorable robot replacement for therapy animals

This week, we’re at the enormous tech tradeshow CES 2016 in Las Vegas, bringing you the latest, coolest and most exciting new technology straight from the show floor. Find out more here, and see what we’ve covered so far here. 

There are a lot of amazing innovations in the robotics section of CES, but we did a huge double-take when we saw Paro. “Is that a robot seal?!!”

Yes, yes it is.

Paro is possibly the world’s sweetest therapy robot, designed to keep people company in hospitals or nursing homes when a real animal wouldn’t be practical. He seems to work pretty well for that, but we’re not in hospital and we still want one. Here we are giving him a cuddle on the show floor:

Paro is already in use in Japan, and the photos on the website are so heartwarming, they actually brought a tear to our eye.

As we’ve said before, the key to selling tech is making it lovable, and the team behind Paro have nailed that. He’s not available to consumers at the moment, but in the meantime, you can find out more on the Paro website. Aww.

Main image: Paro