IoT Can’t Survive Alone Unless Married To Cognitive, Says IBM

As companies across the world embark on their digital transformation journeys, they may want to pause and think. “Digitalisation is only the foundation and not the destination. Cognitive is the real game changer,” Shalini Kapoor, CTO, Watson IoT Ecosystem, IBM said at the ongoing global IoTNext Summit in Bengaluru.

Customers typically use Internet of Things (IoT) to improve operations and reduce costs, create new products and models, and drive customer engagement and experience. “But IoT can’t survive alone unless married to cognitive,” Kapoor said. The real value lies in being able to turn the data into meaningful insights, she said.

Cognitive IoT actively learns from the context, continuously adapts to be more useful and robust, and relates insights in an easily understandable manner, Kapoor said.

For some time now, IBM has been actively talking about its cognitive computing system Watson that uses analytics and machine learning to solve complex customer problems. Earlier this year, Hilton Worldwide and IBM announced a collaboration to pilot its first Watson-enabled robot concierge ‘Connie’ in the hospitality industry. Connie draws on domain knowledge from Watson and WayBlazer (a travel cognitive computing startup) to inform guests on all travel related matters.

Citing another example of cognitive IoT, Kapoor talked about how IBM Watson has powered ‘Olli’, a self drive electric vehicle designed by Local Motors, a car maker based in Arizona. Passengers in the 12-seater mini bus can use natural language to place commands like “I’d like to go to (workplace)” and the vehicle will process based on the 30 sensors it is equipped with.