Katarzyna Garncarek

5/5 (1)

Alibaba is one of the largest e-commerce Chinese companies. Few days ago, this giant announced its’ entrance to the sector of commercial robotics. Alibaba introduced Space Egg – a robot designed to work in hotels, which distributes ordered food and items [2]. Already next month, company plans to allocate first robot in one of Chinese hotels. The Space Egg is almost one meter high and uses an advanced navigation system, enhanced by cameras and lasers to compute its current location and allow for accurate motion. However, the machine moves slightly slower in than a human – it reaches a speed of one meter per second [1]. Most probably the future versions of the product will enhance its motion capabilities.

AliGenie, another development of Alibaba, is a device working alike to Alexa. It is an AI assistant which is installed in hotel rooms. Space Egg’s system is integrated with Genie, allowing for instant interconnection of both devices [3]. Thus, guests can make orders directly from their hotel rooms using a voice command. Thanks to that, Alibaba’s AI Lab claims that Space Egg will become an assistant of the most demanding clients who appreciate fast and convenient ways to fulfil their wants [1].

Similar machines are already introduced in various industries. In recent years, Savioke has built a robotic butler, called Botlr, which serves hotels’ clients. Furthermore, Panasonic created HOSPI- a machine designer to ferry medical supplies around hospitals and clinics. Recently popular CLOi, made by LG, serve cocktails in bars and carry luggage at the airports . Thus, it may seem that Alibaba’s new launch is not an innovative device. In my opinion it is partly true[1]. However, it ability to cooperate with Genie of this robo-porter is a novel functionality compared to competitors.

Even though robots designed to carry around items existed already, I think that, Space Egg raised the bar to the next level, showing that the future belongs to interconnected and interactive devices. As presented, one of e-commerce leaders now enters different industries with novel propositions. Alibaba just made a new launch and is already planning to introduce a Space Egg’s “ hospital brother” to ferry medical supplies – Space Shuttle [2]. It will also be used to transport items in supermarkets [3]. What is more, this firm aims to target other markets, for example create more customized robots for restaurants and offices.

Few questions arise: Which industry is going to be target next? And, will those technologies could possibly increase unemployment since tasks currently performed by humans are taken over by rotos?

This seems to be very interesting to get to know, but who will suffer from when curiosity become a reality? Or maybe there is no need to worry because those technologies will only complement us and make our life easier.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/25/17900160/alibaba-ai-robot-space-egg-hotel-porter

[2] https://worldnewsbuz.com/chinese-e-commerce-giant-alibaba-has-built-a-robot-porter-for-hotels-called-space-egg/

[3] https://technode.com/2018/09/20/alibaba-service-robots/

[4] https://youtu.be/tAyN8MVA9IE

[5] picture – https://qtxasset.com/styles/breakpoint_sm_default_480px_w/s3/hotelmanagement/1537884994/AI-Labs-Robot.png?UqrIokjkoSVHOrJJyaTRmFaDi7_bWhl.&itok=8-Hpmkus

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Current world lives and breathes data. Scientists, journalists, researchers and data geeks desire an incessant access to thousands of data repositories, containing datasets from various fields. For many years, Google desired to manage commercial information and make it conveniently accessible for those who need it. Now, it targets the scientific community by launching a new search engine called Dataset Search.
New service works alike to well-known search engine for academic studies- Google Scholar. It allows for finding datasets regardless of their source. They can come from personal sites, publishers’ web pages or digital libraries. By following pre-described guidelines for dataset providers, institutions can publish their data and use meta tags to indicate its characteristics. Such specification allows Google and other search engines to better understand sets and their content. Next, Google analyzes and links the dataset to different versions of the same dataset. Indexed information is later added to Google’s Knowledge Graphs, which maps the relation between datasets. Even though Dataset Search contains now mostly datasets from environmental and social fields of studies, the topical diversity is expected to expand. Additionally, the new engine is relatively intuitive and easy to use. A user looks for a desired content by stating a query, which specifies the search attributes.
Who is invited to share its datasets? Generally speaking everyone who would like to share their data! Natasha Noy, a research scientists at Google AI, underlines that both large and small dataset providers can contribute ecosystem of standardized, unified, accessible and robust collection. The engine eases the datasets search, resolved the problem of their fragmentation and foster scientific enrichment.
Dataset Search is a beta version, thus it still requires testing and some improvements, especially when it comes to data filtration and reliability. Nevertheless, in my opinion it is a promising project, which, if successful, may became a powerful tool used not only by scientific community and journalists, but also academia and students to conduct research. I look forward to the exciting future of the product.

References:

1. https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/5/17822562/google-dataset-search-service-scholar-scientific-journal-open-data-access
2. https://www.blog.google/products/search/making-it-easier-discover-datasets/
3. https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/google-dataset-search-engine-launched-for-researchers-and-data-journalists-5126011.html

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