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Blue Frog’s Buddy robot helps sick children rebuild social connections with Agora’s real-time communication

3 images showing interaction between a robot and humans

About blue frog

Blue Frog Robotics is a pioneer and leader in social robotics, creating “robots for good.” Based in France, the company uses the combination of emotional artificial intelligence (AI), computer vision, natural language processing, and gesture controls in its robots to drive positive outcomes for users. Blue Frog’s emotional support robot, Buddy, is currently being used for childhood education, eldercare, and healthcare use cases when the user is hospitalized or homebound.

Buddy’s telepresence function helps to preserve social connection with the user’s loved ones and facilitate remote medical video consultations. This reduces the sense of isolation by allowing users to participate in school and home life remotely, with much deeper engagement than a standard video call. France’s Ministry of National Education recently purchased 1,750 Buddy robots to help homebound or hospitalized children remotely interact with their peers in classrooms.

“The right combination of reliable real-time video and AI technology in a robot allows the remote user to transcend physical distance and feel emotionally connected with others.”

marc Gourlan, chief product officer, blue frog

The Power of Real-Time Engagement

3 images showing interaction between Robots and multiple Students

Buddy’s telepresence function can place the user anywhere in the world at a remote location instantly, providing a physical presence via virtual engagement. Buddy is set in place and operated and moved in real-time by the remote user on their tablet, allowing them to interact with others using movements and emotions in addition to real-time communication. This connects the user to others in a unique way that traditional video-conference products cannot.

Buddy’s built-in speakers, microphone array system, and a plethora of sensors and actuators allow for natural communication and movement. When not being used for telepresence, Buddy can move and interact autonomously with a high level of emotional AI and complex computer vision capabilities. This allows the robot to serve as a companion to the user when not being used to communicate.

Products used

The best quality and reliability for real-time video

Before implementing Agora, Blue Frog faced problems with quality of service (QoS). They also lacked visibility into the call quality between the robot and the user on the tablet side. Agora’s real-time engagement technology was able to solve these problems and ensure the highest QoS and quality of experience (QoE) on both sides of the robot’s communication.

Blue Frog looked at other solutions, but Agora offered the highest quality Android-compatible solution for their needs. Blue Frog is now confident about the robustness and reliability of the telepresence function via Buddy the robot thanks to Agora’s technology and global real-time network. Because Buddy was created to help rebuild social connection, Agora’s reliable audio and video communication is essential to Blue Frog.

“We chose Agora based on the high quality of the white label video call solution. We are very satisfied with the support provided by the Agora team.”

marc gourlan, Chief product officer, blue frog

Blue Frog, Chief Product Officer, Marc Gourlan

“When your product is designed to help rebuild social connection, reliability is essential. Agora’s network delivers the consistently reliable video communication we need for our Buddy robot.”

MARC GOURLAN, CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER, BLUE FROG

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