Backstage at Roskilde City

179 Performances. 130,000 Visitors. 10 Days. The annual Roskilde Festival in Denmark is a lot to handle. Keeping people safe, fed, hydrated, sheltered, entertained and informed is like running a small city. Behind the scenes, students of Copenhagen Business School (CBS) are working with festival organizers to manage it all with IBM Analytics. Every piece of data from things visitors buy, to places where they spend their time, is fed to IBM Watson, to help CBS create the most efficient plan for the world’s shortest-living city. And the more Watson learns, the better the “city” runs. We hear that this year Roskilde’s best dancer gets to be mayor.  

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8 years ago

Video Game High School

At one high school in Austin, Texas, students spend class time playing video games! But not just any game, it’s one the students built on IBM Bluemix® and IBM Watson™, with the help of their teacher, David Conover. The result is a serious game called Medical Mindcraft where Watson interacts with students through gameplay to make medical research entertaining. Modeled after popular world-building games, this cognitive game is designed to inject lessons on health science, pharmacology and other challenging subjects into the action. It seems child’s play has grown up a bit.

8 years ago

Everybody gets a car!

Well, maybe not from us, but if you use the car sharing service, car2go, then you could say we helped. Car2go’s IBM Cloud-based app makes it possible for you to find, reserve and drive their cars parked around town. The cloud also helps keep personal info secure and gives the app the ability to handle spikes on busy weekends. You could say that the cloud makes it easier for drivers to kiss the headaches of car ownership goodbye. We know we wouldn’t miss trying to remember where we parked.

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8 years ago

When in doubt

Your heart races double-time. Your eyes widen. You’re lost in a Class IV rapid of doubt. It’s the “add to cart” moment. Shopping online can be overwhelming and you could use some expert advice to guide you. Like when you need to know if a mountaineer grade sleeping bag is necessary for a June music festival. Or if a water-resistant jacket is more practical for Yosemite than a waterproof one. That’s why IBM Watson has partnered with Fluid, Inc. Together they are learning to understand product and review data to help online retailers like The North Face pair in-stock inventory with what’s in store for your upcoming adventures. Just take a deep breath, and proceed to checkout.

See what else IBM Watson is up to →

8 years ago

What a dreamboat

Close your eyes and imagine you’re on a boat. You wave to the people on the shore as you speed by at 150mph. This boat has got heat sensors and load sensors and pressure sensors and all of that data is streaming to the IBM Cloud. SilverHook Powerboats make boats just like the one you’re thinking of for professional racing teams. The cloud lets these teams keep an eye on 2,000 bits of data per second so teams can spot hazards before accidents happen. Which means even in your wildest dreams, you can be totally safe.

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8 years ago

C is for Cognitive

Sesame Street is getting a new neighbor. Over the next three years, IBM Watson will work with Sesame Workshop, Sesame Street’s non-profit education group, to help create cognitive learning tools for preschoolers – that is, programs and products that teach and learn from children as their knowledge grows.  With Sesame Workshop’s expertise and Watson’s natural language processing, pattern recognition and other cognitive abilities, soon we’ll have access to teaching aids that adapt lessons based on the individual likes, dislikes and engagement level of each child. It’s a friendship that even Oscar the Grouch is happy about.

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8 years ago

Love at first analysis

It’s almost impossible not to fall in love with every puppy you come across. But when it comes to guide dogs, pairing the right one to a blind or visually impaired owner requires much more than puppy love. Guiding Eyes for the Blind, a non-profit guide dog organization, uses Watson Analytics to screen over half-a-million canine health and temperament records in the IBM Cloud. That’s hundreds of data points for each pup to help increase the chances of a successful pairing.

Read more about training guide dogs →

8 years ago

Movies of tomorrow

Cognitive storytelling is changing the movie going experience. As sponsors of the Tribeca Film Festival, IBM and the next generation of filmmakers are exploring new ways technology can help us bring powerful stories to the big screen. Stories we can sense through touch and taste. Stories created from learned audience behavior insights. Stories we want to watch again and again. 

Read the full story on Forbes →

8 years ago

Dispatches from Dublin:

Honk if you find a cat 

A cat goes missing. It’s getting late. Parked cars sense the signal from from Mr. Mittens’ radio tracking collar. His family pinpoints his location and drives out to pick him up. This is one of many cognitive applications researchers at IBM’s research lab in Dublin are testing to make our cars’ built-in GPS systems, motion sensors, rear view cameras and onboard computers useful even when we’re not driving them. By connecting parked cars across a city, the combined network could provide us with information to help find pets, locate parking spots, detect gas leaks, record break-ins and more.

8 years ago

Dispatches from Dublin:

If the walls could talk

We have smart cars, smart phones, even smart appliances And now, researchers at IBM’s research lab in Dublin are applying cognitive technology to help buildings adapt to the way we use them. In other words, data collection systems and sensors will allow buildings to ”think,” so they can learn from daily activity, self-adjust for comfort and optimize for productivity – all while being energy efficient. Soon the buildings we live and work in will be mindful enough to dim the lights… guide us to a warmer room… or turn off the TV – if we forget for the millionth time.

8 years ago

Dispatches from Dublin:

Cloudy with a chance of watts

How do we predict the unpredictable? Well, when it comes to the weather and energy consumption, researchers at IBM’s research lab in Dublin are working on an answer. It’s an algorithm that learns to moderate power supply by relating weather patterns to power usage. Power grids with this cognitive technology will help energy companies better predict how much power residential areas need to compensate for changes in the weather, and how much the weather will affect what they can generate from wind, solar and other renewable sources. So we’ll always have the gigawatts we need.

8 years ago

Outthink personal bests

The body is one remarkable machine. With a mix of will and discipline, it can take you from weekend jogger to marathon finisher within months. But reaching the elite levels of running—now that requires a whole other level of preparation. Diehards, meet ORRECO, the partner behind a new cognitive training app that runs with IBM Watson. By cross-analyzing biomarker data with sports nutrition and medicine intelligence, it can tailor training programs to fit each unique athlete. Put your personal bests on notice→

8 years ago