Your Emotional Buddy

Happiness, anger, love, fear, sadness, pride, or excitement; expressing emotions plays a major role in our daily lives as living beings. The ability to show emotions enables us to convey our feelings, opinions, moods, or thoughts, making it possible for the outside world to better understand someone. Emotions serve as a connection, perhaps even creating a deep bond. Whether they are negative or positive emotions, one way or another, they are an important aspect of human life and crucial for building meaningful relationships.

This becomes an intrinsic trait for robots to mimic. Much like our ability to express feelings, robots are designed with nuanced facial expressions, tone variations, and responsive behaviors to bridge the gap in emotional communication. While lacking genuine emotions, they navigate this terrain to interpret and mimic emotional states, enhancing the quality of interactions in human-robot relationships. This integration of emotional understanding in robotics allows transforming machines into empathetic and meaningful companions.



Hasbro FurReal Friends polar bear on Allaz


Can nap, play, and interact with you. 

FurReal Friends 

You might remember the furry friends from the early 2000s. These toys served as cute huggable artificial pets, copying the trait of showing emotions and seeming like real animals. These interactive toys embody certain emotional characteristics, such as joy, excitement, or contentment, through their lifelike movements, sounds, and responsiveness. The intention behind FurReal Friends is to offer users an engaging and interactive experience that emulates an emotional attachment to a real buddy. 

Different face displays EMO has.

Over the years, there have been advancements in the development of artificial creatures capable of mimicking emotions. Among them is EMO, a living AI pet designed to accompany you wherever you go. EMO exhibits the ability to explore its surroundings and react to them, expressing various movements and emotions in response. With over 1000 different faces that it can display on its tiny face screen, and the hopping movements it can make, EMO can express its emotions, making it a cute companion.

JIBO 

Even though its life may have come to an end already (may they rest in peace) the beautiful creature JIBO founded in 2012, was the first social robot that focussed on adapting its responses to the user’s preferences. While it may not possess true emotions, the ability to remember preferences and engage in personalized interactions contributes to an illusion of responsiveness, creating a unique and emotionally attached bond. 

Jibo home robot from OLogic.

FanPal

As all the mentioned examples describe artificial creatures capable of displaying emotions, they still lack a common interest with the user and the ability to express excitement about things they are a fan of. Being a fan typically involves a strong and enthusiastic liking, support, or admiration for a particular person, group, team, activity, or concept. This emotion is often linked to human character, shaping personality, and is therefore one of the most important emotions a person can have.

Now, my created artificial creature, FanPal, can experience similar feelings. With a responsive and adaptive AI system similar to JIBO's, FanPal can talk along to any of the user's interests. FanPal's architecture includes a large model trained to stay up-to-date with today's culture. Whether fangirling about classic movies or expressing excitement over pop music, FanPal can become the biggest fan of anything.



AI generated picture of FanPal.

Generated picture of a fluffy FanPal that is dancing to music.