TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — The Artificial Intelligence Expo opened its doors in Tokyo on Wednesday (June 28) for the first time ever, showcasing a variety of next-generation technologies from a robotic sommelier to an emotion analyzer.
Japanese logistics solution company VINX collaborated with AI developer Sensy to create the “robot sommelier” which can suggest the best bottle to satisfy a customer’s specific tastes by asking them to fill out a questionnaire following a short tasting session.
The system, which utilizes Softbank’s Pepper humanoid robot, is already being used in a department store in Tokyo that says they have seen a 48 percent rise in sales since it was put to work last August. Developers say it can be more effective in judging each customer’s tastes than an actual human sommelier.
Also on show was Hong Kong-based Sensetime’s over version of a security guard called “Sense Guard,” an intelligent access control system that uses artificial intelligence to recognize a person’s face.
A New York-based marketing solution developer McCann rolled out the “Creative Flower” which they say detects brain pulses and calculates how creative a person is.
Some technologies were still in progress, including Japanese software developer Automagi’s food detector “Robot Concierge Cart,” which can currently identify about 200 different kinds of food and display their nutritional value. The firm hopes the system will eventually be able to develop into a robot that can do grocery shopping on its own.
The AI Expo, showcasing 110 domestic and international exhibitors, is the first of its kind in Japan and organizers expect more than 63,000 visitors to attend the three-day event being held as a part of the annual Contents Tokyo exhibition.
