2. 
   

   
   
   commmentary- I had a short thread on the TV series west world. IF anyone could make something like that a reality..it would be here. As in
   
   
   NTT and Toyota Begin Joint Research Aimed at Promoting
   the Use of Lifestyle Support Robots
   Working towards a society in which humans and robots coexist harmoniously
   
   
   Toyota City, Japan, September 25, 2017—Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) and Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) have commenced joint research with the aim of promoting the use of partner robots that can help and coexist harmoniously with humans. The research aims to provide support for various situations that occur in daily life utilizing AI technology (corevo®) from the NTT Group and the Human Support Robot (HSR), one of the partner robots currently being developed by Toyota.
   
   1.Background
   Previously, robot development focused primarily on industrial robots in factories and other workplaces fulfilling tasks in place of humans. However, in recent years, as observed in products like robot vacuum cleaners, increased attention has been given to partner robots. Partner robots operate inside homes and can help with such tasks as housework, nursing and child raising, or acting as a partner with which to communicate*.
   
   NTT is engaging in the research and development of corevo®, which incorporates media processing technologies with world-leading levels of accuracy (the company’s voice recognition technologies being a prime example) and interaction technologies such as R-env® so that robots and other personified agents operating on corevo® are able to understand human words and expressions, as well as understand advanced discussions that incorporate hand and body gestures. Through its collaboration with various manufacturers, NTT has promoted initiatives that equip robots with a variety of different characteristics to become more integrated into human life.
   
   
   
   Commentary..
   
   All I wanted to find was a Japanese carrier who just might have an interest in always on voice...
   
   I found that in NTT DoCoMo, and a WHOLE lot more.
   
   
   I gained insight in that  phrase-this stuff does NOT happen overnight.
   

   jfieb, 10 minutes agoEditDeleteReport

   #12Reply
3. 

   jfiebWell-Known Member

   
   

   Wow, look at this...
   so far ahead of his time....!
   
   
   Ryohei Nakatsu, PhD
   Professor, National University of Singapore
   (emeritus)
   Tel:
   E-mail: nakatsu.ryohei@gmail.com
   Homepage: http://www.ece.nus.edu.sg/staff/bio/nr.html
   Ryohei Nakatsu received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electronic engineering from Kyoto University in 1969, 1971, and 1982, respectively. After joining NTT in 1971, he mainly worked on speech recognition technology. In 1994, he joined Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute (ATR) as the President of ATR Media Integration & Communications Research Laboratories. From the spring of 2002, he has been a Professor at School of Science and Technology, Kwansei Gakuin University. At the same time, he established a venture company, Nirvana Technology Inc., and became a President of the company. Between 2008 and 2014 he was Professor at the National University of Singapore and director of the Interactive & Digital Media Institute (IDMI) till 2011. [Read about hisvision]
   His research interests include
   
   
   emotion extraction from speech and facial images, emotion recognition, nonverbal communications, and integration of multimodalities in communications.
   
   so far ahead of his time....!
   
   He received the Best Paper Award from the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems (1996); Telecom System Award from Telecommunication System Foundation (1999 and 2000); the Best Paper Award from Virtual Reality Society of Japan (1999, 2000, and 2001); and the Best Paper Award from Artificial Intelligence Society of Japan (2000). He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers Japan (IEICE-J).
   
   He was the chair of TC14 on Entertainment Computing as part of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP).
   He is co-editor in chief of the international journal on ENTERTAINMENT COMPUTING with Elsevier.
   He is co-editor in chief of the Handbook for Digital Games and Entertainment Technology with Springer.
   

1. junemoon, wkav and John like this.
2. 

   jfiebWell-Known Member

   
   

   October 11, 2017 2:59 am JST
   NTT Docomo readies low-cost voice control for AI speakers
   Slashing development costs 99% helps adapt tech to variety of services
   
   
   TOKYO -- NTT Docomo looks to release software that could propel the spread of voice prompts to control home electronics by slashing the traditional development costs tied to business adaption by as much as 99%.
   
   
   
   The software, planned for release as early as next year, would be used via smart speakers supported by artificial intelligence, as well as other devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. The technology would enable users to access various services by simply talking to the devices.
   
   The software boasts minimal development costs for companies eager to offer voice-prompt services. For existing systems like IBM's Watson, software typically needs to be reformulated based on the nature of the services. The associated cost of 10 million yen to 30 million yen ($88,780 to $266,340) annually has hampered the widespread use of such software.
   
   Docomo curbs this cost by minimizing the development work for such tweaks and providing customers with the tools needed for this development for free.
   
   The mobile communications company says it has received inquiries from dozens of businesses. Financial institutions are considering such services as letting elderly people trade stocks via voice prompts, for instance.
   
   Docomo, which aims to have at least 100 companies using its new software by 2020, will offer the software on its "dmarket" online marketplace on a trial basis in the spring. Docomo will use the test launch to identify areas for improvement. The company plans to sell a dedicated microphone for audio input.
   
   U.S. tech companies Amazon.com and Google are among those gearing up to release AI-supported smart speakers in Japan, which are viewed as the next product to dominate the market after smartphones. Voice features will be crucial in winning the competition.
   
   The Nippon Telegraph & Telephone group has researched voice recognition for a long time, yielding developments such as the i-concier mobile personal-assistant service. By offering new software to a broad range of companies, the group hopes its services will take root widely.

Q3 cc.

a major Japanese Smartphone OEM that is targeting EOS S3 for new models scheduled to launch in 2018. 

note it is a plural.


Barcelona...

that they are intending to showcase at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.(if their lead Japanese carrier mandates certain features enabled by EOS S3 the phone will roll out,)


this was fun.

Commentary..

Consider that that this would be part of a major shift across ecosystems to have always listening
on many devices. 
As far as the shifting of a few quarters...after reading (DoCOMo) , it is very much like the TIer 1 wearable.
A LOT of work, it has to be right and integrated into an ecosystem. Once there it could spread across so many devices. It seems inevitable that someone will be ready to roll with one......

Nick H....

This quote is so good....


As Saint Exupery said in his biography “Wind, Sand and Stars”,


“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”

Take away the push to talk button. Lose that Bix button, etc.

Tripartite AI Alliance
Korean, Chinese and Japanese Telecom Leaders Forge 'AI Alliance'

Hwang Chang-kyu, chairman of KT, Xiang Bing, chairman of China Mobile and Yoshizawa Kazuhiro, president of NTT DoCoMo (from right) are posing for a commemorative photo shoot at the General Meeting of the SCFA 2017. (photo courtesy: KT)
30 November 2017 - 10:00am
Cho Jin-young
KT of Korea, China Mobile of China and NTT DoCoMo of Japan joined forces in the development of AI technology and services.

On November 29, KT announced that the company held the General Meeting of the SCFA 2017, a strategic council among leading telecommunication service providers of Korea, China and Japan with China Mobile and NTT DoCoMo at the Conrad Hotel in Guangdong, China.




KT, China Mobile and NTT DoCoMo agreed to create the 'AI Task Force Team' for the first time at the conference. KT and China Mobile are planning to elaborate their multilingual AI databases through exchanges of interpretation and translation data. In addition, the telecom trio will test various services and discover services through which they can cooperate with one another by sharing various AI speech recognition application programming interfaces (APIs).

China Mobile and NTT DoCoMo are applying AI technology to customer services, the IoT, and marketing among others. KT hopes that the newly established AI TF Team will be a new opportunity for the global AI business, following collaboration with Sound Hound, a leading AI company in US Silicon Valley.

Meanwhile, during the meeting, a lot of attention was paid to KT’s free WiFi roaming service in Korea, China and Japan which is the service that only KT is providing among Korean telecommunication service carriers. The number of cases where KT subscribers used the free WiFi roaming service in China and Japan reached 100,000 in just two months after the launch of the service.


So why did I put this up?


As an example of a Japanese carrier who might want always listening for smartphones...

Q2 cc
the good news is that the design has expanded from a simple sensor hub function to one that now includes a carrier-driven requirement for always-on voice as well. 

Use DOCOMO as a fairly good mental model as shown here and that it could be BIGGER

 

disclaimer..

 If their lead Japanese carrier mandates certain features enabled by EOS S3,