Home » IBM Watson powers IoT from washing machines to health care

IBM Watson powers IoT from washing machines to health care

IBM Watson made a lot waves a few years ago, but hasn’t been in the news much recently. This IFA IBM have released a press release that highlights how IBM Watson has been causing waves in the consumer world. Below are a few examples.

Whirlpool: Enhancing Lives at Home
Whirlpool is using Watson technologies to help deliver superior customer service and enhance people’s lives at home by enabling its home appliances to connect with and interact with one another and their users.

For example, a Whirlpool washing machine will communicate directly with a Whirlpool dryer letting it know what kind of laundry load to expect and the optimum drying program to use – saving precious time and helping to reduce energy consumption in the home. Using sensors and cognitive intelligence, appliances will learn about how people use them giving design feedback to Whirlpool’s engineers and offering new levels of assistance to consumers for re-ordering detergents, filters and other supplies directly from online retailers.

Panasonic: Creating Smarter, Safer Homes

Panasonic is also exploring how Watson’s unique machine learning and natural language processing capabilities can help transform the services it provides to consumers – giving them greater peace of mind knowing that their homes are comfortable, safe and secure.

One of the areas in focus is home safety and security where Panasonic’s security cameras and sensors to detect movement, glass breakage, door and window opening, will be coupled with Watson’s cognitive computing capabilities. Thanks to video analytics, a home security system would know not to react if the neighbours’ children are just fetching their football, but will automatically alert the police or security services if likely intruder tries to scale a fence to enter the property.

Nokia: Transforming Healthcare
More connected homes are safer homes for vulnerable family members especially the elderly. Cognitive and IoT technologies are opening up new opportunities for the discreet monitoring and care of elderly and sick people at home.

IBM and Nokia are exploring opportunities to integrate IBM Watson IoT with Nokia wearables and smart devices for home care. Their goal is a system that helps to detect and alert caregivers to potential problems such as: deviation from daily routines, abnormal vital signs and sudden changes in the home environment. Voice activated interfaces in the home will be able to take simple commands (such as ‘call an ambulance’) and offer reminders to take medicines or turn off appliances. The companies are also jointly exploring the role of predictive analytics to learn from historical data, spotting correlations, which can then be used to predict future issues and trigger actions for carers. This includes leveraging the Nokia IoT management platform to keep track of the millions of devices that will be added to networks from new healthcare applications alone.Bragi: Putting the Power of IoT into the Ear
Bragi – an early pioneer in the hearables market – has turned to IBM to help develop innovative business solutions for the workplace. The company’s smart earphones, The Dash, are some of the world’s most powerful micro-wearable computers with 27 unique sensors that can measure a user’s vital signs while augmenting their communications and interactivity. With Kickstarter funding, Bragi has already successfully launched The Dash onto the consumer market for sport and recreation.

Now, tapping the language translation and speech-to-text capabilities of IBM’s Watson IoT platform, Bragi plans to apply its hearable technologies to transform the way people interact, communicate and collaborate in the workplace. The vision is for users to use the headset to receive instructions, interact with co-workers and enable management teams to keep track of the location, operating environment, wellbeing and safety of workers. The two companies are even looking into how head gestures could enable users to respond to instructions or send commands for simple tasks such as turning the page in an instruction manual during hands-on or dangerous tasks.


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