The recent trend that big robotics companies are working on is to make the humanoid robots more human. A robot need not necessarily show its dancing skills but IBM’s AI system shows that even robots can have fun, though it needs to be programmed in.
At present, Nao works as a concierge at a few Hilton hotels, where it helps guests by answering questions. Nao is a winning feat in AI because you can ask Nao anything in the world and since it is designed to be hospitable to guests, it always replies with polite answers. It has highly developed speech recognition software and has an advanced understanding of normal human speech patterns. This makes it easier to have ‘natural’ conversations with Nao, compared to other robots.
There’s more to this multi-lingual robot than brilliant brains. IBM Watson’s Chief Technology Officer, Rob High, presented a demo of a concierge robot called Watson Nao at the Nvidia’s GTU technology conference. When asked to sing, the robot immediately sang Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake It Off’ and even imitated some of her dance moves.
With Nao becoming more human, even Sherlock can now famously say “You know my methods, Watson. Know it quite well!”
Watch the multi-potential Nao robot here: