Open FURBY is an open community-based project with the goal of providing low-cost social robot platform based on FURBY® toy from Hasbro®.
Multiple robotics projects are developed, aimed at providing the humans with friendly robots permanently accompanying them in their daily lives. In the majority they represent expensive robotic constructions with very limited possibilities. The establishment and maintenance of the robot-human communication, both verbal and non-verbal, depend essentially on capabilities of naturally and plausibly showing emotions by generating facial expressions by the robot.
FURBY toy manufactured by Hasbro Inc. has a friendly appearance with outstanding capabilities in such price segment. Unfortunately, manufacturer does not provide for the possibility of using its product as a HRI (human-robot interaction) research platform. There is no possibility of full behaviour control. Our goal is to modify current version of FURBY and equipped him in a custom controller that allows to control him form PC.
FURBY and the FURBY logo are trademarks of Hasbro Inc. registered in the U.S. and other countries.
Official Open FURBY project page and YouTube Channel