Robots have been used in a variety of industrial applications for years. Is it time for them to come out of the warehouse and interact with humans?
An acquisition this week in the sector of companies designing robots for social applications suggests activity in this area is ramping up. Swedish firm Furhat Robotics this week announced its acquisition of Colorado-based Misty Robotics (What’s more human-like and socially engaging than two companies with monikers that sound like nicknames you’d apply to friends? You know, the one who cries ugly at sappy commercials and the other who’s fond of wearing winter hats even indoors during the summer.)
The deal gives Furhat a U.S. base of operations for its growing business in this market, where its social robot platform already has been used by U.S.-based brands that include Disney, Intel, Accenture and Facebook.
Both Furhat and Misty have made strides in recent years in developing robots that are more human-like and better designed for human engagement. Misty was spun off in 2018 from Sphero, the maker of an adorable and headline-grabbing app-controlled Star Wars BB-8 robot toy. It has since created a robot platform designed to give developers affordable access to a programmable platform that can be adapted for different use cases and applications.
Furhat, meanwhile, has produced a social robot that can be adapted to have a human-like face representing different genders, racial appearances and age demographics, and a variety of human-like voices (truly impressive design feats that mitigate the otherwise disconcerting bodiless head aspect we can all agree to overlook.)
Anyway, the Twitter announcement of the deal that displays the two robots side by side is not to be missed:
The Furhat robot has leveraged those capabilities for a variety of business and academic use cases, including what Furhat claims is “the world’s first truly unbiased” interviewer of job candidates, capable of avoiding unconscious biases about race and gender that humans bring into job interviews.
The companies together now plan to “expand the category of social robotics, and develop the next generation of human interfaces,” according to a statement about the acquisition, which also said the parties will “partially integrate Furhat and Misty features to enhance future social robots.” That includes providing future Misty robots with Furat’s visual perception and conversational AI capabilities, and bringing Furhat’s voice and personality customization to those units as well.
Furhat Robotics co-founder and CEO Samer Al Moubayed, who previously worked as a Pittsburgh-based research scientist for Disney Imagineering, will be based between Furhat’s Stockholm headquarters and the Misty Robotics offices in Boulder, Colorado, the statement added.
UPDATE, 01/19/22 11 A.M. ET: Al Moubayed told Fierce Electronics via email that the acquisition is a marriage of hardware and software, two areas of expertise that for the most part have developed separately until now. "...Historically, robotics companies have focused on building advanced and complex hardware and since most robotics companies start with expertise in hardware, it is traditionally difficult to bring the best of hardware and software into the same platform," he said. "Furhat started with a focus on software for human-computer interaction and has developed best-in-class software for conversational AI in robotics. Getting the chance to bring that to Misty is a marriage of software and hardware."
He added that this deal doesn't mean that robotics has entered a consolidation phase. "The acquisition is not driven by efforts to consolidate the market due to competition," he stated. "Rather, the market is still very new and we need additional robots in the world to give more options for applications of robots in different markets. The acquisition is partly driven by the strategy to build an even stronger team and bring expertise from different fields together. We also believe that for robots to make it in the world, companies will need large muscles and big investments, and this acquisition we hope will build a stronger company with higher chances of success."
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