Researchers and robot aficionados from around the world are exploring how Furhat can help people in a variety of ways. — We are still in the early stages of the development of social robotics. The technology is in the exciting period of research and discovery, with new uses and possibilities for social robots appearing around every corner as the technology continues to develop and more people enter the field. At this…

In Italy around 500 years ago, there was a common style of theater called Commedia dell’Arte. It was a physical, very melodramatic style, often half scripted / half improvised with archetypal characters wearing masks. — Variants of this way of doing theater have survived to the present day, and was one of the major influences on the work of Dario Fo, the 1997 Nobel Laureate in Literature. An integral part of this type of theater was a concept called lazzi. And it turns out there…

Are you trying to wrap your head around the many aspects of building great social robot interactions? It’s not an easy nut to crack! Once you’ve figured out important dimensions such as user engagement, character and physical environment, you still need to nail the conversation. So what should a robot actually say? — The Furhat Robot is using humankind’s oldest interface — literally the face itself — and as humans, we are hardcoded from birth to interact with faces. This means that as social robot skill developers, we have some catching up to do. One of the main components of an interaction with…

What is a social robot? The word “robot” comes from the 1920 play Rossum’s Universal Robots by Czech writer Karel Čapek, and literally means “slave” in Czech. In industry, the term has mostly been used for machines that perform some heavy, dangerous or repetitive tasks for us. The primary purpose of a social robot, on the other hand, is not to perform physical tasks, but to interact with humans. An example from science fiction is C-3PO in Star Wars, which is a “protocol droid” skilled in etiquette, customs, and translation, and knows over six million languages, but is very seldomly seen using its arms and hands.

Recently we have been on a mission to improve the expressivity and the way facial animation is handled by the robot. We wanted to make the face more expressive, while at the same time providing intuitive control. We wanted to make it possible to easily author high-quality expressions without the need to manually specify animation parameter targets. This blog post explains how we achieved that, and how you can make the most out of it.

The Furhat platform for social robotics research and development is built specifically with face-to-face interaction in mind. A truly unique and defining feature of the Furhat robot is the back-projected face, which sets Furhat apart from other social robots in two important ways: it is customizable to the extent that the appearance can be completely changed, and the animated face also makes the robot more expressive than most other robots. In this article, we introduce Furhat’s all-new face engine, FaceCore, and what it brings to the table with particular focus on customization of robot appearance.

The battle wages on between brick-and-mortar stores and online retailers. Rates of shoppers opting to purchase products and services online continue to rapidly grow, due to the ease, speed and customized experience on offer. This has been a problem for retailers with physical stores for years, something that has only been exacerbated by the recent pandemic. Unique experiences through innovation can be a key driver to bring customers back into stores and differentiate services from online competition. Here, we take a look at how social robots are playing a role in this retail experience shift.

Lifelong learning and development is becoming increasingly important as jobs and desired skills change quickly. In a world where more and more “hard skills” are handled by machines, practicing and perfecting one’s professional social skills becomes even more essential in order to stay relevant. But finding the opportunity to train and prepare for social contexts and situations can be challenging — we do after all need a counterpart to practice with to make it closer to the real world. Could social robots be part of a new employee training revolution and practice professional, social skills with humans?

“The adventure of life is to learn” — this was once said by the writer William Arthur Ward, and while maybe not everyone would agree on the adventure aspect, learning new things is a key part of life. Just like any other industry, it’s necessary for the education industry to continue to innovate and be open to new methods of learning — not only to keep students engaged, but also to cater for unexpected circumstances like the current COVID-19 situation, where many students find themselves studying remotely while schools and universities are closed. At Furhat Robotics, we believe that social robots are part of transforming the future education landscape!