Furfur is a robotic pet shared by couples in long-distance relationships. It employs two conceptual elements: illusion of travel and repertoire. Each partner has a box containing a Furfur. It can be summoned by knocking on the lid of the closed box. However, it only appears if the other Furfur is idle in its box. This creates the illusion of Furfur being a single entity, able to travel from one partner to the other, spending time with each of them, but never simultaneously. Furfur's design further hinges on changing its behavioral repertoire through interaction. In the last version, it picks up sounds from the environment and reproduces it when interacting with the partners. Furfur's repertoire is therefore influenced by both partners and creates a joint activity of sharing a pet.
Reference: Wei-Chi Chien, Marc Hassenzahl, Julika Welge. 2016. Sharing a Robotic Pet as a Maintenance Strategy for Romantic Couples in Long-Distance Relationships. An Autobiographical Design Exploration. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. (CHI EA '16) 1375-1382.
