Tony is a Geek

So, here's a photo of a bunch of books that just happen to be sitting on my work desk, looking all majestic and intellectual. This is the sort of thing that a lot of people over the past few weeks have started to strategically place behind themselves for those all important conference calls, where other people will be looking and trying to eye up, "so what books do you have behind you?....oh, maybe I should read some of those and then I'll be as smart as you". That could be why these books are not behind me, they are infront and to the side, I can see them but you cannot.  What is behind me? hang on, let me turn around and look......a MASSIVE 3D printer with a Playstation 2 Time Crisis gun on the bed (absolutely no idea, maybe I found it in a cupboard and it was making it's way off the "games room", but I got distracted), some photo's of my MG F over the years taken by professional photographers as I was entering "event/shows" and a...

Okay, so you may have noticed that recently, I made a 3D Avatar / Digital Human using the Unity 3D engine and connected it up to the IBM Watson SDK . Well, straight after doing that piece of work, I thought...hmmm... I also have the Unreal Engine installed on my laptop too, I wonder if there is an IBM Watson SDK sample app that could use that engine to do what I did above... A quick DuckDuckGo search later and yep, here is a gitHub . A quick 50,000ft difference check is - what are you more comfortable writing your code in? C# from Microsoft (Unity) or C/C++ (Unreal Engine) What have you had more experience in using? So, why am I pointing this out?  Well, I happened to stumble over a Digital Human that is created and controlled by the Unreal Engine....and well, it's pretty awesome! My Unity / "couple of days" effort project versus this (probably) quite a few £££££ effort doesn't really compare - but what it does show is that this level of technology and ef...

Totally, 100% selfish plug :-) https://developer.ibm.com/recipes/tutorials/create-a-3d-digital-human-with-ibm-watson-assistant-and-unity3d Have you ever thought to yourself: y'know, I want my own HOLLY ( from Red Dwarf ) I have "skills"..... I'm a computer software developer..... I have "stuff" on my laptop that I've installed / used a few times, but forgotten what it was for again.... .....and you have a spare 30-40 minutes?  (and $35) Then look no further, welcome to the world of Unity, UMA2, SALSA, IBM Watson SDK and the IBM Watson Assistant API service! I wrote an article that may be useful to follow if you want to do the above sort of thing on a rainy Saturday morning.... https://developer.ibm.com/recipes/tutorials/create-a-3d-digital-human-with-ibm-watson-assistant-and-unity3d (and yes, I know the TTS is not that accurate, I didn't give it much/if any training, so I'm surprised it did as well as it did!) ...

https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/20/ibm-watson-assistant/ IBM's Watson-based voice assistant is coming to cars and smart homes This all sounds very familiar :-D http://tonyisageek.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/ibm-bmw-and-iot.html ......... One of IBM's first partners Harman will demonstrate Watson Assistant at the event through a digital cockpit aboard a Maserati GranCabrio, though the companies didn't elaborate on what it can do. In fact, IBM already released a Watson-powered voice assistant for cybersecurity early last year. You'll be able to access Watson Assistant via text or voice, depending on the device and how IBM's partner decides to incorporate it. So, you'll definitely be using voice if it's a smart speaker, but you might be able to text commands to a home device. Speaking of commands, it wasn't just designed to follow them -- it was designed to learn from your actions and remember your preferences. If you allow the Watson-powered ap...

Meet CIMON: http://fortune.com/2018/02/28/ibm-cimon-robot/ Called CIMON (Crew Interactive Mobile Companion), the new crew member is about the size of a medicine ball and will work alongside human astronauts in space. The “floating brain” is equipped with IBM’s  Watson artificial intelligence technology  and is expected to assist astronauts during the European Space Agency’s Horizons mission in June.

very minor update, but great fun along the way.... As previous shared, I setup an RPi3 with ROS and was about to move into the coding of ROS nodes .  Whilst that was okay...it involved me having to use Python and whilst I see it's really useful to use, it's not my native tongue.  That is JavaScript...has been client & server-side since about 1998, so it's my go-to comfort first choice. So rather than attempting to port everything in my head into Python and then into ROS nodes, I thought I would do what I needed to do: "to get it to work" and then I'd look at porting it over. What did that require?  Well, installing NodeJS and npm on the RPi3 for one.  Dead easy and simple to do. Oh, I forgot to say what it is/was I wanted to actually achieve!  okay, I want to be able to SHOUT at T1ll13 and for her to always be listening via a microphone ( no trigger "Alexa" or "Google" words for me ), to convert that Speech to Text, then s...

You know I like Robots. You know I like IBM Watson API services. Checkout how to get those 2 working together - there's a full description of everything needed in the github repo readme.md CHECKOUT THE GITHUB REPO (now) (watch the YoutTube replay of the Live cast HERE ) I'm going to take this as a baseline and instead of using the NAO, I'm going to use my T1ll13 robot-head. oh, btw - I've made some really good 3D printing success and building - roll on the weekend when I can get those web-cam eyes hooked up and working too!  

You may recall my Digital Music Tangent post a little while back?....  It may have sounded a little odd and off-the-wall, but it's funny how things sometimes connect up in the universe. Welcome to the IBM Watson bEAT.   You can use this open-source software to create rich compositions from simple input melodies.  That's right, if you can hum it (and record it), you can get Watson to then take these elements and combine to make some non-man made music. Check it out and run it on your own laptop and get creative: https://github.com/cognitive-catalyst/watson-beat Using machine learning to spur human creativity is so 2018! Watson has used a combination of reinforcement learning and neural networks to create the Watson Beat. The first album "Space" is actually very melodic and has replaced my usual "meditation music" that I usually listen to when I start the working day. ( Full album on YouTube here ) Full length original article is HERE ...

Baby Driver is a good movie, but this is not what this article is about.... I extracted the bits that I thought were eye-opening from the following article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-09-07/this-startup-is-making-virtual-people-who-look-and-act-impossibly-real Soul Machines wants to produce the first wave of likeable, believable virtual assistants that work as customer service agents and breathe life into hunks of plastic such as Amazon.com’s Echo and Google Inc.’s Home.  https://www.soulmachines.com/ .... .... Mark Sagar’s approach on this front may be his most radical contribution to the field. Behind the exquisite faces he builds are unprecedented biological models and simulations. When BabyX smiles, it’s because her simulated brain has responded to stimuli by releasing a cocktail of virtual dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin into her system. This is part of Sagar’s larger quest, using AI to reverse-engineer how humans work. He wants to get to ...

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/ibm-and-mit-ai-partnership/ "This work is undeniably promising, but it’s a simple evolution of the hardware we have today. Another, more dramatic option is the use of a quantum computer  to explore the potential of an A.I. Such research is still in its earliest conceptual stages, but the enormous computational power of a large-scale universal quantum computer seems likely to inspire a major leap in our understanding. MIT’s lab will have access to IBM Q , the company’s flagship quantum project. Recently updated to a 20-qubit processor , an even more impressive 50-qubit version on the horizon – hardware that will surely be a real gamechanger when it’s possible to use it to its full potential. This avenue of research is set to be a two-way street. Machine learning will be used to help advance research into quantum hardware, and the results will help scientists push the boundaries of machine learning. ..... The MIT-IBM Wa...

A great article on what I see as the "Next step....." https://sdtimes.com/ibm-expands-ai-research-support-aging-population/ “For the first time ever, there are more people over 65 than under 5,” Keohane said. “There is essentially a shortage of care providers. If you look at this demographic shift across the globe, this is why a company like IBM is interested in looking at aging. What does the aging demographic shift mean for our clients? We’re in every industry and every one will be impacted.” By combining IBM’s IoT and health care research with their Watson machine learning, Keohane says that the effect this shift will have can be broken down in such a way that it will benefit everyone from the elderly in need of improved care to businesses, now more aware of their customer base. “Aging isn’t a disease,” Keohane said. “We’re all doing it. But it does have impact on health. So could we surround ourselves with emerging technology in the home, while ...

Whilst I like the Poppy robot, the cost of £4,500 just for the actuators blows it out of the realms of affordability - (hey, I have a custom car that eats all my money!), now, if I didn't have the car I would probably have bought this kit already .... yeah, that'll set you back about £8,500.  Whilst that is about a 1/3rd of the cost of a commercial robot, I'm not looking to invest that much just yet... My aim was to not spend time on the "small" £500 robots that you can get from the likes of EZ Robot which are pretty cool in their own right, I like the fact this robot is modular and allows you to change and extend it as you want.  But, I want to make something that is about child size, 4foot or so.  That's why I was liking the Poppy.  Legs can be a problem (like the Poppy) and whilst I'm not too fussed about spending a lot of time getting leg/weight/balance co-ordination right, I would rather have a bottom half that is more Pepper like . (Next t...

.......My creative brain has been going overtime the past couple of months (okay, I'll admit since 2001, but formulating since 2010....) and soon, very soon, it's going to over-spill into something awesome....... I'll share, when mind transforms into matter and reality.... until then here are some things to distract the mind .................................................................................... ....................................................................................

A few posts back I mentioned: Oh, I've also been making a Java Android Mobile application that uses Speech to Text, then calls the APIs of the IBM Watson Conversation Service translates that Text back to Speech and enables you to have a full blown conversation in voice instead of having to type and read messages ( also does it in 3 different languages at the moment ) - I'll create an article specifically to show you how to do this quickly and easily using the Watson SDK.  Then, "if" my arm gets twisted enough, I might look at porting it to run on iOS ( but as I still don't have a iOS device, it might be tricky!) Well, here it is.... CLICK HERE TO READ THE WALKTHROUGH ARTICLE CLICK HERE TO READ THE WALKTHROUGH ARTICLE CLICK HERE TO READ THE WALKTHROUGH ARTICLE Naturally, I'll be extending and growing this example of using Watson APIs beyond just the Conversation Service.  I think I might interface with the Watson Visual Recognition serv...

So...it has been noticed that I have been rather quiet on the technical front for quite some time... have I been doing exciting things? have I been doing boring things? have I been doing both and neither of those two things?  I've been doing all of them....and more. "That makes no sense!", I hear you say.  Well, as you may or may not know I've had a bit more than a passing interest in Mysticism, Cosmology, the Occult and Magical teaching of times gone by.  Yes, I do actually have a larger library than John Dee had back in the day.  Did I go off and become the next Gandalf  the grey  or Dr.Strange?  No.  Well, okay, maybe a little bit...... I was attempting to learn the techniques and learning practices of working with the mind, soul and the perception of reality of the world ( as you do ) and looking at ways that these teachings and practices can be applied in a Technology orientated world.  I like a challenge ;-) As you can imagi...

The Building Cognitive Applications with IBM® Watson Services series is a seven-volume collection that introduces IBM Watson® cognitive computing services. The series includes an overview of specific Watson services with their associated architectures and simple code examples. Each volume describes how you can use and implement these services in your applications through practical use cases. The series includes the following volumes: Volume 1 Getting Started, SG24-8387 Volume 2 Conversation, SG24-8394 Volume 3 Visual Recognition, SG24-8393 Volume 4 Natural Language Classifier, SG24-8391 Volume 5 Language Translator, SG24-8392 Volume 6 Speech to Text and Text to Speech, SG24-8388 Volume 7 Natural Language Understanding, SG24-8398 Whether you are a beginner or an experienced developer, this collection provides the information you need to start your research on Watson services. If your goal is to become more familiar with Watson in relation to your current environment, or ...

I've been a little quiet on the "work orientated" technical / geek front for most of this year.  The main reason being, I re-focused my geeki-ness - mainly due to the work I was doing here last year: http://tonyisageek.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/ibm-bmw-and-iot.html Now, I've officially migrated to the IBM Watson group , where my role is to help transform businesses using Cloud based Cognitive technologies that can think like a human, using the IBM Watson API services. Here's an official Vodafone press release on something I've been contributing to: Vodafone to use artificial intelligence to speed up online queries TOBi, Vodafone’s new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, is now helping some customers online It will be available soon in the My Vodafone app new messaging service as well, so customers can speak to advisors whenever they want Vodafone UK has launched TOBi – the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot – as an innovative way of offeri...

Well, seeing as I spent quite a bit of time there last year , seems right to post the official news: CHECK OUT THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE "Some clients will be a permanent fixture at IBM offices in Munich. BMW employees will work at the new center to place Watson voice control into cars and explore ways to create personalized experiences." CHECK OUT THE IBM OFFICIAL SITE HERE

I don't know what you were doing a couple of months ago?.... but I know what I was doing with one of those BMW i8s :-) This was my "office desk" There are times I love my job..... "The Internet of Things is transforming our relationship with the physical world. In Munich Germany, IBM is creating a new global center for collaborative innovation side-by-side with clients and partners. IBM will invest $200 million US to make Watson IoT HQ one of the most advanced facilities in the world. BMW is one of the first collocated partners and together, we will start a new pilot program to explore the role of IBM Watson in the BMW i8 hybrid car. BMW engineers & IBM experts will work together in "collaboratories" to explore Watson technologies for personalization of the driving experience. With conversational interfaces & machine learning, cars will get to know their drivers better."

some "light" reading for the next month or so....... should keep me busy and out of trouble....or it could get me "into" trouble  :-D