An increasingly important part of
daily life is dealing with so-called user interfaces. Whether it's a smartphone
or an airport check-in system, the user's ability to get what they want out of
the machine relies on their own adaptability to unfamiliar interfaces. But what
if you could simply talk to a machine the way you talk to a human being? And
what if the machine could also ask you questions, or even address two different
people at once? These kinds of interactive abilities are being developed at KTH
Royal Institute of Technology with the help of an award-winning robotic head
that takes its name from the fur hat it wears. With a computer-generated,
animated face that is rear-projected on a 3D mask, Furhat is actually a
platform for testing various interactive technologies, such as speech
synthesis, speech recognition and eye-tracking.
The robot can conduct
conversations with multiple people, turning its head and looking each person
straight in the eye, while moving its animated lips in synch with its words. The
project represents the third generation of spoken dialogue systems that has
been in development at KTH's Department for Speech, Music and Hearing during
the last 15 years. The Furhat team aims to develop its technology for
commercial use, with the help of funding from Sweden's Vinnova, a government
agency that supports innovation projects. Furhat is becoming a popular research
platform for scientists around the world who study human interaction with
machines. It's very simple, it's potentially very cheap to make, and people
want to use it in their own research areas. Furhat also has attracted attention
from researchers at Microsoft and Disney.
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