University news

Displaced people seeking to start new lives in Scotland could be helped to settle in the country with the support of a new social robot in development at the University of Glasgow.
 
Human-robot interaction specialists and linguists from the University have teamed up with a Glasgow charity to explore the potential of AI-powered interactive robots to help refugees and asylum seekers access information and support in their native languages.
 
Using a robot modelled to look like a human head which can listen to questions and provide spoken answers, the system aims to remove many of the barriers which can prevent displaced people from easily accessing support and the services they are entitled to use.
 
The development of the system – believed to be the first of its kind to be co-designed in partnership with refugees and asylum seekers - is being led by Shaul Ashkenazi, a PhD student at the University’s UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Socially Intelligent Artificial Agents (Social AI CDT).

Shaul Ashkenazi with the Furhat robot

He has been volunteering at the Central & West Integration Network (CWIN), a Glasgow-based community organisation which offers support to migrants, for more than two years.
 
With the support of staff and service users at CWIN, he has developed a prototype system built around a robot head made by Furhat Robotics. It is capable of interacting with users in both Modern Standard Arabic and English, and in the future could provide access to a custom-built database of local services like food banks, libraries and healthcare providers in its responses.
 
Insights from focus groups held with CWIN service users will be showcased as a paper presented at the 2025 International Conference on Social Robotics + AI in Naples, Italy later this week.
 
Mr Ashkenazi said: “Scotland hosts about 16% of the UK’s population of Syrian refugees who arrived here under the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme, with around 650 currently awaiting asylum decisions. They can face a wide range of challenges on their journey to becoming ‘New Scots’, from language barriers to an incomplete understanding of the support they can access.
 
“Working with CWIN as a volunteer helped show me how much help and support is required to help people start new lives in Scotland. As a researcher interested in how we can build systems which enable useful interactions between humans and computers, I was keen to explore how we could use emerging technologies like large language models and human-like robots to augment the support already available from groups like CWIN.”
 
The development of the prototype was guided by a collaboration with nine Syrian refugees and asylum seekers who receive support from CWIN. The study’s participants – three women and six men aged between 31 and 48 – took part in discussions about their experiences of living in Scotland and the challenges they have faced. The discussions were held in Arabic by Rawan Srour-Zreik, a co-author of the paper and another PhD student at the Social AI CDT, in order to help the participants express themselves as easily as possible.

Rawan Srour-Zreik leads a focus group with CWIN service users
 
The study participants highlighted a series of shared issues including access to housing, language barriers, and challenges in understanding and navigating the various support systems available to them.
 
Then, the team introduced the participants to the Furhat robot and demonstrated its capabilities by showing it answering questions about tax exemptions in Arabic and English. The team also gauged the participant’s responses to different potential gender presentations for the robot by dressing it in a wig and hijab, then in a beard. 
 
The participants didn’t express a preference for either presentation, but their feedback was positive. They felt that a system which could help them access services in their own language could be helpful in the future, and that speaking to a robot rather than a person could help overcome the embarrassment that can arise from discussing personal problems. They also suggested that the robot could be made even more inclusive by adding support for Kurdish, another language often spoken by Syrian refugees and asylum seekers. 
 
Mr Ashkenazi added: “This study shows that there is a willingness to engage with a social robot and that there is potentially real value in expanding the prototype we’ve created. There’s still work to be done to create a fully-featured system, which will include expanding the languages that the robot is able to use. Thanks to the feedback of our study participants, we’re working on integrating support for Sorani Kurdish and Persian, languages which are also spoken in Syria and by people from other regions which CWIN also help to support.
 
“We’ll continue to work with CWIN to test the prototype as it develops in response to continued collaboration with the people we want it to help. Our hope is that social robots like these will be useful sources of support in the years to come.”

 
Florence Dioka, from the Central & West Integration Network said: “CWIN was set up in 2009, based in Glasgow city centre. We receive refugees and asylum seekers from all over the city and beyond to access services. At CWIN, we run services that address our community’s immediate needs and offer a wide range of opportunities including weekly English for Speakers of Other Languages classes, weekly access to community food pantry and community meals, wellbeing activities and a drop-in service where community members can access information, advice, advocacy and other one-to-one support.
 
“The robot’s ability to interact directly with our community members in their native language will help them to navigate the different support systems and facilitate their integration in Scotland.”
 
Professor Jane-Stuart Smith and Dr Mary Ellen Foster of the University co-authored the team’s paper, along with Professor Gabriel Skantze of Furhat and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden.
 
The team’s paper, titled ‘Participatory Design for Human-Robot Interaction with Syrian Refugees and Asylum Seekers’, will be presented at the 2025 International Conference on Social Robotics + AI in Naples, Italy on Thursday 11th September.

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First published: 8 September 2025