The robot that can read your emotions
Nicol Meazzini, 1st August 2018, Business
We introduce the robot that has a 3D printed face, can read your emotions/signals, and can chat with you and tell you jokes.
Furhat Robotics have created a robot that resembles a human in every sense of the word even down to the way it interacts with people. The company in Stockholm developed the Furhat OS – a technology system that allows the robot to interact with humans in the same way we interact with each other – the technology is so advanced that the robot can even gage your emotions and social signals.
To create one of these robots, the technology system is inputted into the 3D-printed mask which can resemble whoever you wish it to and is then completed with the capability to hear, speak and see – making the interaction more personable and real.
Inside the robot’s head there is a small projector that creates the facial expressions. CEO and co-founder, Al Moubayed, says, “we operate in this area called social robotics…it’s a crazy idea that if you create a machine that looks and sounds like people you can use them in valuable ways.”
Al Moubayed and his co-founders met in Sweden at the Royal Institute of Technology where they began their “intellectual quest.”
”We undertook research in understanding humans to create machines that interact with humans the way humans interact with each other,” says Al Moubayed. He continued that “Furhat is about fitting all of the pieces together, combining machines that can speak, understand and even have a body of their own.”
Al Moubayed goes onto explain that they were trying to mould the research together to bring the creation to the final stage and into the physical world – with the ‘real world’ meaning that it can sit with you, understand your physical space and allowing it to interact with multiple people.
One of the biggest challenges that might come up against Furhat is the fear that goes hand-in-hand with science fiction – the notion that robots might take over, and it’s an issue that Al Moubayed agrees needs to be discussed further – “We are extremely engaged in this economic, ethical and social conversation.” He went on to explain that all technology comes with risks but it doesn’t mean it should be ignored and not pursued.
But, Al Moubayed squashes this notion and argues that instead of listening to that fear we should focus on ways in which this technology can help us get back that “ever elusive commodity – time.”
Let us know what you think about this surge in technology here.
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