New Delhi: The students of Maharashtra Institute of Technology
(MIT) Pune and technology giant IBM have developed a robot, Chintu, which would
assist senior citizens in their everyday tasks. Chintu, under 2-ft tall robot,
was developed after MIT Pune received a grant of Rs 10 lakh last year from IBM.
It is powered by the US-based
company's cognitive assistant, IBM Watson. Chintu can move his hands and read
books to an audience. “Drawing from Watson's domain knowledge, Chintu will
assist senior citizens in conducting everyday tasks such as reading the
newspaper book and generate reminders on their daily medication,” said
Professor and Head of Computer Engineering Department at MIT Pune, Vrushali
Kulkarni.
She added that the students have been
working on the project for the past few months. While Chintu is still a few
years from becoming mainstream, the students will continue to work on him to
add functionalities.
“This has also opened up a new and
exciting research avenue for our students. Robotics, Machine Learning and
Cognitive Computing are interesting fields of research today and our students
are getting first hand experience of working in these fields,” she said.
Mezjan Dallas, University Relations
Leader at IBM India said the project is a great example of co-creation.
Source: DNA-23rd March,2017
