The 10th Furhat Conference on Social Robotics

Social Robots in the Wild:
The Impact of Real-World Interaction

Tuesday May 26th 2026
CET 16:00 - 18:00 (EDT 10:00 - 12:00)
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Welcome to the 10th Furhat Conference on Social Robotics

For its 10th edition, the Furhat Conference focuses on what happens when robots are placed in everyday contexts and what challenges and opportunities emerge outside the lab. Bringing together researchers and practitioners, the conference will highlight recent studies in areas such as healthcare, education, group interaction, and applied training systems. Through these perspectives, we want to reflect on how real-world deployment is shaping the way social robots are designed, studied, and evaluated.

Join us on the 26th of May at 4:00-6:00 PM CEST (10:00-12:00 AM EST) for a focused discussion on the next phase of human–robot interaction grounded in practice, informed by research, and centered on real interaction.
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About the conference

For its 10th edition, the Furhat Conference focuses on what happens when robots are placed in everyday contexts and what challenges and opportunities emerge outside the lab. Bringing together researchers and practitioners, the conference will highlight recent studies in areas such as healthcare, education, group interaction, and applied training systems. Through these perspectives, we want to reflect on how real-world deployment is shaping the way social robots are designed, studied, and evaluated.

Join us on the 26th of May at 4:00-6:00 PM CEST (10:00-12:00 AM EST) for a focused discussion on the next phase of human–robot interaction grounded in practice, informed by research, and centered on real interaction.

Speakers

We bring you experts from leading global research institutions in the field of HRI

Social Robots in Care: Exploring Human–Robot Interaction with Furhat in Mental Health and Rehabilitation

Assoc. Prof. Paulina Tsvetkova

an Associate Professor at the Institute of Robotics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

Her interdisciplinary work bridges Artificial Intelligence, Social Robotics and Psychology, with research interests in Natural Language Processing and intelligent robotic systems for psychological practice. She is actively involved in European research initiatives focused on social inclusion and digital mental health. At the conference, she will present two recent studies exploring the use of social robots in mental health assessment and rehabilitation contexts.

Two Faces of Interaction: VR Telepresence for Fostering Engaging Human-Robot Communication

Ekaterina Torubarova

PhD student at KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Ekaterina is a PhD student at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. With a background in cognitive neuroscience, she conducts multidisciplinary research in human-human and human-robot communication. In her PhD project, she is exploring how people perceive communication with different agents at the behavioral and neural level, and how knowledge of the brain can help create more engaging social robots.

Conference agenda

16:00
10 minutes
Samer Al Moubayed
Opening
16:10
15 minutes
Ruben Janssens
Powering Visually Grounded Adaptive Social Dialogue for Robots using Vision-Language Models
16:25
10 minutes
Oscar Klock
A sneak peek at our current projects and a mic demo from Furhat Robotics
16:35
5 minutes
Break
16:40
15 minutes
Paulina Tsvetkova
Social Robots in Care: Exploring Human–Robot Interaction with Furhat in Mental Health and Rehabilitation
16:55
15 minutes
Ekaterina Torubarova
Two Faces of Interaction: VR Telepresence for Fostering Engaging Human-Robot Communication
17:10
10 minutes
Gabriel Skantze and Oscar Klock
Q&A discussion panel
17:20
5 minutes
Closing Remarks
Conference Records

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