Panasonic, IBM Team On Watson-Driven Smart Mirror For Hotels

January 8, 2017 by Dave Haynes

Panasonic and IBM were showing a smart mirror/digital concierge last week during CES, at an offsite demo area run by IBM.

The Panasonic Digital Concierge uses the IBM Watson artificial intelligence platform as part of a digital envisioned as being installed in the rooms of, let’s assume, higher-end hotels. The idea is that a guest would be able to to not only checkout whether they zipped their fly and tucked in a top, and also poke away at that mirror for information on things like hotel services, news, local transport and so on.

In the demo in the video below, the guest orders a bottle of wine without getting any sense of what kind, size of bottle or price – which means he either badly needs a drink(s) or no one back at the office scrutinizes his expenses.

“Panasonic has identified a need for this and several other kinds of connected solutions in the hospitality industry,” says Yasuji Enokido, president of Panasonic Corporation’s AVC Networks Company.  “Working with IBM, we plan to further implement our connected solutions vision while making use of Watson intelligence to provide end-users with more natural cognitive functionality as well as richer feature sets.”

The release goes on to say:

Panasonic and IBM will also partner to extend their collaboration to applications for the Panasonic-developed LinkRay. This technology enables users to automatically receive content from digital signage or light source by merely pointing a LinkRay app-equipped mobile device at such a source. Integrated with hospitality applications in customers’ mobile phones, this enables a whole range of new opportunities to enhance consumer experiences around location based services and content consumption through the cloud.

“IBM Watson gets to truly know the individual and provides highly personalized experiences and recommendations,” says Bruce Anderson, Global Managing Director, IBM Electronics Industry.  “Together with Panasonic we are bringing the power of cognitive to the hospitality industry to introduce a new level of customer service and further brand loyalty.”   

This would be an interesting way to improve on the binders we all find stuff in desk drawers or by the TV, explaining what’s available in the hotel. Instead of being updated, maybe, every year (and probably not that frequently), this is information that can be updated pretty much on the fly. Hotels could push late night food based on over-supply in the kitchen, and prompt for things like late checkouts.

On the other hand, this could and is being done on smart TVs in rooms, and in some cases, on room-installed networked tablets.

I wonder how you get the fingerprints off without the UX on the screen going nuts …

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