Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Texting Appliances

How would like to text your fridge or even send an internet fax to the TV? Yes we are one step closer to making our homes smarter. LG Electronics has unveiled a virtual assistant service that lets customers text their wireless home appliances through the messaging service LINE; the appliances made by LG will be enabled with its new, HomeChat technology. The devices including fridges and televisions will use natural language processing to understand commands or status-update requests that owners sent to them through LINE, the one of the world’s biggest messaging platform with more than 310 million registered users and counting. The service rolls out in 2014 with LG’s range of smart vacuums, ovens and fridges and other appliances, LG’s chief technology officer, Scott Ahn, announced the service at the Consumer Electronics Show on Monday. Are these smart appliances really solving a certain problem or just a novelty? For example, Users could also send a text to the HOM-BOT asking “When did you last clean?” to which it might reply, ”10:50 started cleaning with zigzag mode; 11:30 completed cleaning with zigzag mode,” according to LG. Text “What are you doing?” to the LG washing machine and it should reply with details on where it is in the wash cycle. This made me chuckle a bit.

4 comments:

  1. I do not think that I would find texting my washing machine that productive. Although many four years will find the communication service rather entertaining.

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  2. Communication services that are connected to appliances are not solving a problem. Better software development with these appliances might be something to look into.

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  3. Are we too lazy to get up and see what the appliance is doing instead of using communication services? Is this really the direction we want to be going in?

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  4. Communication services can be used for better things than that. Internet fax should be kept in business.

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