Furhat Blog

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Raising eyebrows: the power of animated facial features

A social robot with proper visual articulation will allow us to suspend our disbelief for longer. Yes, of course we logically know that it is merely a machine, but if it looks and acts coherently like a character, we will still allow ourselves to be immersed in non-verbal interaction.

Should social robots have touch screens?

Interaction with a social robot like Furhat is inherently different from interaction with a voice assistant. The difference is similar to that between talking to someone face-to-face in the same room compared to a phone conversation.

I can see clearly now – the visual perception of a social robot

For a robot to interact socially with human beings, it indeed must be able to not only detect, but also understand human faces and what they represent. Here is a glimpse into how we make this possible.

How to integrate NLU and Dialog with Furhat

In a conversation, we constantly try to interpret what our conversational partner is saying and decipher what meaning they want to convey. For social robots, we call this capability Natural Language Understanding. But how do we use this in the Furhat platform?

5 steps to making robot interactions stronger

You are designing a social robot interaction. You are fighting against the monotone intonation of speech synthesis, against latency in the speech recognition and against the very narrow conversational path you have to lead your users down because “real” AI does not exist yet. How can you avoid your interaction being experienced as slow and flat? How do you make it come to life?

Using Wizard-of-Oz for user studies with Furhat

Our powerful Wizard-of-Oz tool is a great method to collect data for quick iterations on prototypes and to control experiments. We have outlined how this works and the fun history behind the term.

Why do we even need robots? Aren’t chatbots and avatars enough?

Why are social robots better than chatbots or voice assistants? Here are four powerful reasons.

Behind the scenes: programming the world’s most advanced social robot

What’s it like building a brand new program on the world’s most advanced social robot? With no how-to, no experience, and high ambitions? A software engineer shares his insights.

The 7 best use cases for social robots

What are the best applications for social robots? Which industries are on the verge of the new robotics revolution? Here are 7 ways social robots are about to change the world.

How can social robots help us understand human suffering?

Psychologist Robert Johansson has devoted his life’s work to helping those with mental illness. It’s a problem almost as old as humanity itself — but could modern technology be part of the solution?

What’s in a name? The story behind Furhat Robotics

The power of a proper noun is not to be underestimated. So why on earth are we called Furhat Robotics?

Learn more about the Furhat platform

And join us in bringing social robots to the world.

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