While a Westworld-ian future of lifelike humanoid robots may still be a long way away, the world of robotics in 2018 is at quite a fascinating point. AI voice assistants are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and large-scale robots are getting more and more dynamically mobile. However, bringing all these disparate elements together into a single advanced social robot we are comfortable communicating with is still one of the biggest hurdles facing roboticists. Generally, the robots are either weird little android toys that resemble sci-fi pets, or their attempts at being truly lifelike drop us into the creepy chasm of the uncanny valley.
 
Stockholm-based startup, Furhat Robotics has been working to create the next generation of social robot. Its solution, designed to transcend the current mechanical limitations in creating a realistically lifelike humanoid interface, is to use projection technology to transfer a face onto a moveable head-shaped base.
 
The Furhat system incorporates the company's custom-developed conversational AI engine into a unit that holds real-time visual tracking systems. A camera tracks whomever Furhat is communicating with, allowing for the head, with three degrees of freedom, to tilt and maintain eye-contact.
 
Currently, three standard face masks have been developed for the system to back-project customized faces onto. Regular male or female human projected faces can be used but the launch video suggests anything is possible here, with examples ranging from animal faces to a character resembling something from Avatar.
 
The system seems to avoid slipping into uncanny valley territory by not trying to explicitly resemble the physical texture of a human face. Instead, it can offer an interesting simulacrum of a face that interacts in real-time with humans. This offers an interesting middle-ground between alien robot faces and clunky attempts to resemble human heads using latex and mechanical servos.

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