Inspiration
The upcoming Olympic Games present one of a kind opportunity for Japan for showing the World the latest technology born inside it womb. One of these is humanoid robots, highly expected to arrive soon to a commercial state globally and regarded as one of Japan best products and qualities.
What it does
In this project we develop a proof of concept applications for the humanoid robot Pepper, these consist on four different services provided by Pepper to both tourists and natives during the Tokyo Olympic Games that will be held in 2020. The applications are:
- Teaching about Japanese Culture (Praying at Shinto Shrines)
- Train station adviser
- Take a Photo and send by email
- Tourist information
How we built it
The start of any project usually begins with a planning stage, this was not the exception. After carefully discuss the Ideas and Motivations of the team members, the theme for "Pepper 2020" was selected.
The next step was selecting requirements for the system and the functionalities that would be provided.
After a quick learning about Pepper hardware and software, the programming began, the methodology was held as shown next
- First Module: Body Movement.
- Second Module: Picture taking.
- Third Module: Email Sending.
- Fourth Module: Speech Recognition.
- Fifth Module: Tablet Usage.
- Sixth Module: Tourist Information.
- Seventh Module: Task Selection.
- Eightieth Module: Integration.
Each of then include their proper testing stages.
Challenges we ran into
Email access became an issue that needed to be solved to comply with our requirements, it seem to be a difficult task that after many unsuccessful iterations but at the end was solved by restarting Pepper.
Speech Recognition became also part of the difficulties, probably will not work perfectly due to the different accent from the participants, which seem to be difficult for the API to understand.
The integration from all modules at the end has to be perform with extreme careful not to create unwanted loops and ensuring the correct performance from Pepper.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
The Integration of different applications which will allow foreigners that visit Japan, use a powerful tool for education, entertainment, information and other.
Being able of performing enough capabilities into Pepper with so little time.
What we learned
During this process we were blessed with the opportunity to work with such a great tool as Pepper is. Learning about the system and how to hack into it to perform to our liking. Including too different programming languages that need to used and we had no past knowledge, for example Python, HTML and CSS.
What's next for Pepper2020
Pepper 2020 by itself is pure potential waiting for being used during the next Tokyo Olympic games.
Between the functionalities we would like to explore and improve are:
- Apply Machine Learning for a more natural conversation approach.
- Improve the Tourist Information Module.
- Include a Language Translation application.
Thank you for your time.
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