#RoboBusiness Day 1: Computing to change from transaction processing to cognition processing

IBM’s Rob High chats with Nao during RoboBusiness 2015 keynote. Source: Robotics Trends via Twitter

“Cognitive computing will be to computing what transaction processing is today.” So said IBM’s Robert High in his keynote talk at RoboBusiness yesterday. In less than 10 years the volume of our business computing will change from transaction processing to cognition processing.

This is an important enough trend to stimulate IBM to put over $1 billion into their Watson group – a group working on healthcare, legal and other industry segments that can benefit from the same cognition processing technology that enabled Watson to win at Jeopardy. And it’s an important enough trend effecting the human-machine interaction space that it is noteworthy in relation to the RoboBusiness conference.

High, CTO of IBM’s Watson Group, described the emerging era of embodied cognitive computing leading to providing cognition as a service, as a 3rd hand such as a lab technician might need, or as a concierge as Jibo and Echo (and human concierges) offer, as an office assistant might provide, and in field settings like search and rescue. The cognition process involves machines interacting with humans in writing, verbally, with tactile and visual cues, and with gestures.

In another talk, ABI Research’s Dan Kara described how technology is transitioning to have constant connection to the Internet of Things (IoT) – from self-describing tags telling robots what they are – thereby supporting the robots perception and manipulation processes – to robots acting as gateways for all the IoT devices that might need to communicate with the robot and perhaps each other, to the ultimate situation of everything being ubiquitously connected to everything.

Ten winners of Robot Launch 2015 were announced – details can be found here – with the Grand Winner being CleverPet, a stylish consumer device responding to the needs of pets and their owners.

“There were winning startups in every category,” said competition organizer Andra Keay. “Every investor could find something to interest them, from cloud based simulations and new sensing technologies to eldercare, rehabilitative and social robotics.”

In the exposition hall – with over 70 exhibitors – one could see the first public appearance of the new Sawyer robot from Rethink Robotics performing a machine-tending application. Across the aisle was Softbank and Aldebaran’s Pepper robot high-fiving and smiling at passers by.

These were just a few of the highlights of day one of RoboBusiness, an annual business-focused robotics conference and trade show produced by EH Publishing.

Tomorrow’s keynote presentations include Ray Kurzweil talking about the coming merger of robots and biology.

More to follow.

Frank Tobe is the owner and publisher of The Robot Report, and is also a panel member for Robohub's Robotics by Invitation series.

Frank Tobe is the owner and publisher of The Robot Report, and is also a panel member for Robohub's Robotics by Invitation series.