Mirai Komachi Furhat Robot Unveiled
**UPDATE ON AUGUST 20, 2019**
The official press release from Furhat Robotics can now be read online here!
Furhat Robotics has been making waves in the tech world ever since their Furhat “social robot” was unveiled. Now the Stockholm-based company has announced a partnership with Bandai Nacmo Research Inc. in which the two companies engage in what they call “intercourse about the real world of humans and anime characters.”
Their goal is to combine Furhat’s robot technology with Bandai Namco’s know-how of the entertainment business to create a robot character with human characteristics for use in the entertainment world, and whom anyone can learn to love. Furhat CEO, Samer Al Moubayed, stated that if the look of the robot character’s facial expressions is even just a little bit off, then people who know the character wouldn’t like it, creating quite a challenge for them.
The character whom he is referring to is none other than Bandai Namco’s own PR and VOCALOID character, Mirai Komachi. What they unveiled was a Mirai Komachi version of Furhat that they are developing.
According to Bandai Namco game creator, Shohei Nakanowatari, one of their design goals is to make her capable of smiling at any passerby. The purpose is to not just entertain one person, but to entertain multitudes of people with just a single unit. They hope to be able to swap this capability with a variety of others that can be uploaded into her. Nakanowatari praises how Furhat robots do not need to be installed into a device for individual use in order to entertain just that one individual, but can entertain numerous people at once.
As for what the future could bring for this Furhat version of Mirai Komachi, and for the Bandai Namco-Furhat partnership, Nakanowatari states that “There is a lot of potential for new business developments.” He adds that they are advancing talks with Furhat to create the kind of technology for a robot that can truly “entertain multitudes of people with just a single unit.” We’ll have to wait and see how development continues!
Source: TechCrunch Japan
