Softbank is going to connect talking robot Pepper to IBM Watson

Softbank, the largest mobile operator in Japan, last year introduced the talking Pepper robot. According to the plan, the robot should be a satellite and human assistant, and in order to make the robot “smarter”, the system is planned to connect to the IBM Watson cloud service.

Unfortunately, so far the partners do not explain what they are going to achieve through such a connection - perhaps the robot will work as a consultant in Softbank salons, or it will be used for other purposes. It is worth noting that Softbank is going to use the capabilities of IBM Watson not only to make their robot smarter, but also to improve the efficiency of the company itself.

For example, Softbank plans to open access to Watson's cognitive computing capabilities throughout Japan, for banking, education, commerce and medicine. In order to use Watson in Japan, you need to train the Japanese supercomputer . Now the company's specialists are actively working on the process of learning the system, although it is not so easy to learn Japanese even for a supercomputer. So, in Kanji, Japan’s most popular writing system, 6,879 graphics. Watson will teach 250 thousand words in Japanese that he can translate into sequences, sentences. In particular, the supercomputer will be able to identify the subject, object, verb, and the meaning of certain expressions in the context of the entire semantic area.
')
The Japanese will correct the mistakes of Watson, improving the learning process. As soon as Watson studies everything that is needed, the test phase of the project will be launched, which will show how well the system has learned the tricks of the Japanese language.



It is worth noting that the test connection of the robot to IBM Watson has already been carried out. After this connection, the robot was asked "What weapon did Ernest Swinton invent and was this weapon used in World War I?" The robot answered this question correctly: “Tank”. Actually, the cognitive capabilities of the IBM Watson supercomputer make it possible to answer much more complicated questions, so that only a “quiz” of the robot’s capabilities will not be clearly limited.

Pepper himself can not do housework - he is not adapted for this. Instead, the robot can be an excellent interlocutor - and in this case, using the capabilities of the supercomputer is justified, because in this case the robot will “talk” to a much more extensive range of topics than in the case of active work. In addition, Pepper successfully analyzes human emotions; with the help of IBM Watson, a robot can understand facial expressions, capture voice intonation and even non-verbal signals from a human body.

Currently, Softbank plans to launch sales of the robot - but only to developers. Home sales are scheduled for June of this year.