Hasbro's Furby made into open-source programmable robot

A group of Polish roboticists are developing the Hasbro toy, Furby, into an open-source social robot platform, enabling the possibility of "full behaviour control." By replacing the 'brain' with a FLASH controller that runs the Robot Operating System (ROS) and replacing the eyes with small organic light emitting diode (OLED) screens, the Furby is easier to programme and control, and can carry out tasks such as showing weather forecasts or Facebook notifications.

We get a lot of emails from public relations folks at Tech Insider. But one stood out today: a pitch from a group of roboticists in Poland working to turn the Hasbro toy Furby into an open-source robot for tinkering. That means anyone with a little coding knowledge can program a Furby to do and say basically anything. (We posted some examples below.)

Open Furby

Here's how the Open Furby Project describes their mission on their Facebook page:

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.

Creepy as we find the Furby, this is actually a pretty cool idea. A number of short videos on youtube demonstrate the open Furby's potential capabilities.