Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Furhat (The Human Face of AI) Reporting period: 2020-05-01 to 2021-04-30 Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project 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. Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far The company and the commercial development program under this project, and during the first two years, have witnessed incredible growth and overwhelming expansion of our activities. Furhat has grown to position itself as one of the top global brands in social robotics in terms of product vision, technological innovation, and commercial traction. This has been mirrored in international media coverage that covered the company in more than 35 countries and more than 20 languages. This has also driven commercial traction with some leading global enterprise names becoming loyal early adopters to Furhat. This has reflected in the accelerated pilots that our commercial partners have been performing, and in the growth of our developer community - the main vehicle to develop applications for the robot - has reached more than 300% over our estimated forecast, and remains to be the bloodline of innovation for the industry.Key results include: the company has moved into high-capacity manufacturing of robots to satisfy demand and maintain superior quality as we ship worldwide - This is done through a manufacturing partnership with a global production partner and through the development of injection moulding tools to reduce cost and increase quality and speed. In terms of discrimination and exploitation, the company, during year 1 and year 2 has implemented a tight IP protection process to strategically protect the innovations and technologies of Furhat as we start shipping to new territories. Investment in software development brought the evolution of critical sensor and listening systems to improve the experience with the Furhat robot, and in we began developing tools for a broader community of users as well as chartered the Furhat Developer Community. During the year, Furhat has also managed to drive 3 commercial partnerships further into the market - which in turn provide very credible evidence on the maturity of the technology and on the readiness of the market. These partnerships include more pilots for travel-assistant robots by Deutsche Bahn, the tests of PETRA - the medical screening robot with Merck Pharma, and the commercial launch of Tengai - the job interviewing robot in collaboration with the technology recruitment firm TNG. While these pilots and products are very early market entrants and are at the cutting edge of how far robots have made it into daily life - they do provide evidence that user behaviour is supportive of social robots - that people are willing to interact with robots, and that social robots do provide unique value beyond traditional solutions. The company has also significantly grown in social media reach and has attended more than 50 commercial events during the project. Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far) Social robots are most successful in situations where live, face-to-face conversation between humans must take place. Such situations can be found in all fields of human professional & private activity: in healthcare, social work, education, hospitality, retail, entertainment & many others. As of the beginning of 2020, we have successfully started to pilot and deploy Furhat in all of these scenarios. This already goes beyond the state of the art of what early competitors have succeeded to do. One of the key foundational principles to our go-to-market strategy is to develop Furhat as a platform company. This means that instead of focusing on building a single application for the robot to solve one specific problem, we are building the hardware, software, tools, and developer community so that, we, and others in the world, can build applications on Furhat, test them, deploy them, commercialise them, and potentially create revenue from them. This is similar to how Apple led the revolution of the smartphone. For this to work, Furhat has and will continue to create very important technologies to enable that vision to take place. This ranges from empowering robots with sensors and with cognitive computation models so that they understand the environment around them, and can talk to people that stand in front of the robot. On top of that, what makes Furhat very unique and versatile is the patented technology that allows is to adapt its personality, face, age, gender, and voice, using software (without changing the hardware). This means that developers have the flexibility to create the right personality for the robot for their application and users.The success of this business model has very large socio-economic benefits to society, mainly due to the economy it creates around it where developers and commercial partners can create their own businesses on top of the platform. This has already started to take place through the launch of new products several of our partners have done, and by seeing how fast their teams are growing and the number of people our partners are hiring for the applications they are building for Furhat. Bandai Namco showcasing the Mirai robot at a major Japanese entertainment fair CEO giving a live demo of Furhat in front of decision makers in Dubai October 2019 at GITEX expo The Tengai job recruitment robot together with Tengai's CEO and CTO Furhat being demostrated at the Nobel dinner party A snapshot of Petra in action - the medical screening robot in partnership with Merck Deutsche Bahn pilot at the Berlin Central train station
