Interacting with AI by talking is becoming increasingly common. The technology is evolving very quickly, and people are getting more and more comfortable using their voice to interact with devices. However, the way we talk to people remains incredibly more expressive, advanced, and empowering, that talking to a voice assistant. That is because humans can also see each other, can understand their environment, have eyes, and faces, and can communicate with their bodies not only with their voice. Social Robots has been humanity's quest to build a machine that can match that level of interactivity and connection with computers, and can potentially allow for developing a very advanced new application for computers beyond what is available today with voice assistants.
Social Robots is a user interface that has social skills, that looks more like a person (or an animation, child, etc.), and has an expressive face, eyes, and can interact with people, understand them, and see them. Using all of that, they allow users to be uniquely engaged emotionally and psychologically with them, beyond the "transactional interactions" humans use today with other interfaces. Furhat Robotics, in this program, is set out to build the world's leading social robotics company, that allows for social robots to follow a development curve, and a business model and community, similar to that of the smartphone and the personal computer. Social robots can be used to solve thousands of problems that other interfaces can't do, similar to how the smartphone could solve societal problems other interfaces couldn't. These range from helping the elderly at home, to educational robots in school, to robots used for therapy with children, and to robots in public spaces helping travellers, and citizens. All allowing them to interact with robots as if they were interacting with humans. The limit is the sky - and this industry is ancient and at its inception.
Furhat Robotics overall objective is to build the hardware, software, technology stack, developer tools, community, and the right commercial partnerships, to bring robots to society, and to position Furhat, a European startup, as the global leader in this very exciting and promising industry, and has, over the last years, with the support of this funding platform, positioned itself as the #1 European leader in the industry, and a thought leader in defining how robots will be used in society.
