FIDI feeding robot resurfaces on X as Semi Robotics preps Polish home-care rollout

A short clip of FIDI, a compact feeding robot, circulated widely on X in late June after demo footage spread through reposts. Major English-language tech press has not picked up the story yet. HomeBotRadar traced the hardware to Semi Robotics, a Łódź, Poland startup building an AI-guided feeding arm for people who cannot eat independently.

FIDI is not a humanoid butler. It is a tabletop manipulator: a robotic arm, 3D camera, and interchangeable cutlery mounted on a base that holds a plate of food. The user sits at a table or bedside while software tracks mouth position, eating pace, and cues such as head turns or lack of response, then scoops and delivers bites without a caregiver steering every spoonful. Semi Robotics says rivals often need a human to press a button for each rotation or portion. FIDI starts from one touch on a screen after food is loaded. The plate and spoon are dishwasher safe, and the industrial design team 2S Design optimized the shell for cleaning and portability during the 2024 product pass.

From family need to care-home pilots

Semi Robotics grew from a personal need inside the founding team. After hundreds of prototype tests, the company now lists four employees and says video on its site shows working prototypes, not finished retail units. Public materials on semirobotics.pl state the firm is preparing series production and collecting name-and-email reservations for first deliveries.

Polish public funding backs the effort. Poland's National Centre for Research and Development (NCBR) lists a FIDI feeding robot project for Semi Robotics with about 853,000 PLN in subsidy on a 1.05 million PLN budget, running through late 2023. Local press and the Łódź city site report real-world use in social care homes (DPS) in the region, where staff can tend other needs while FIDI runs a meal. The project was also highlighted at Infoshare 2024's Startup Contest as one of the region's leading medtech builds.

Semi Robotics positions FIDI for homes, hospitals, nursing homes, and hospices, targeting users with disabilities or frailty who want more mealtime independence and lighter caregiver load. That puts it closer to ElliQ or Buddy on the care axis than to pet companions like LOVOT, even though the form factor is a single-purpose arm rather than a mobile social robot.

What we do not know yet

There is no public MSRP, no confirmed ship date, and no US or EU retail partner named on the official site. Semi Robotics does not publish battery specs, arm payload, or full dimensions in English documentation we could verify independently. The YouTube clip is marketing-grade footage, not a third-party clinical study. Social reposts are discovery noise, not Semi Robotics announcements, so treat viral reach cautiously until the company posts order terms.

What this means for HomeBotRadar

FIDI is not in the HomeBotRadar catalog today. We list home and companion robots once we can verify specs, pricing, availability, and scores against primary sources. FIDI is still between prototype and series production, with a waitlist only.

We are watching closely. Assistive feeding at the table is a concrete home-adjacent task, and FIDI's vision-guided autonomy is a clearer product story than many viral robot clips. When Semi Robotics publishes confirmed dimensions, price, and regional sales, we plan to evaluate a full catalog entry so readers can compare FIDI with elder-care and desktop platforms already on the matrix. Until then, treat this as an early signal, not a buy recommendation.