Welcome to the Social Robots in Research Conference

‘Social Robots in Research’ – the theme of June 8th 2021 that marked the launch of the very first international Furhat conference. Held virtually, we became inspired during the half-day session by industry experts using the Furhat platform for ground-breaking research studies.Each of the keynotes were recorded, which you can watch below. And as an added bonus, you can access our Research Resources Zone, a collection of the best material for social robots in research and innovation. Happy viewing!

Speakers

Be inspired by the leading experts within the quickly evolving world of AI and Social Robotics

Samer Al Moubayed

CEO, Furhat Robotics

Samer Al Moubayed, Co-founder & CEO of Furhat Robotics, is an Affiliate Faculty at Stockholm's Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), where he earned a PhD in Speech Technology and a Master's in AI and Language. He co-founded Furhat Robotics with colleagues from KTH.

Roger K. Moore

Professor of Spoken Language Processing

Prof. Roger K. Moore has over 40 years of experience in Speech Technology R&D. Former Head of the UK Government’s Speech Research Unit (1985–1999), he developed the Aurix products and co-founded 20/20 Speech Ltd. He is a past President of the International Speech Communication Association.

Sarah Gillet

Ph.D. student, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Sarah, a Ph.D. student at KTH Royal Institute of Technology's Robotics, Perception, and Learning division, researches using social robots to reduce in-group favoritism and enhance social interactions in everyday groups.

Ronald Cumbal

Ph.D. student, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Ronald is a researcher in social robots for educational purposes, particularly second language learning. He holds a Master’s in Mechanical and Control Engineering from Delft University of Technology and studies collaborative learner interactions in robot-mediated activities.

Jonas Beskow

Co-founder and Senior R&D Engineer, Furhat Robotics

Jonas is the co-founder of Furhat Robotics and Senior R&D Engineer, and a professor at KTH specializing in multimodal embodied systems. His work focuses on modeling and synthesizing human communicative behaviors, including speech, facial expressions, and gaze, to make machines interact more human-like.

Helen Hastie

Professor in Computer Science

Helen Hastie is a Professor of Computer Science at Heriot-Watt University, specializing in multimodal dialogue systems, human-robot interaction, and trustworthy autonomous systems. She directs the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Robotics, is Academic Lead for the National Robotarium, and PI for the UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node on Trust. She has held roles on key scientific committees, including advising the Scottish Government on AI Strategy.

Furhat Conference on Social Robots in Research