Foxconn is automating its factories and recently announced it had replaced 60,000 of its employees by deploying robots in their place. The robot being developed for Foxconn by IBM, a robotic arm, is capable of doing almost anything it is told through a voice recognition interface. Sebastien Chaumiole from IBM, describes the the robot as a co-worker. “It will behave naturally with you and understand the context you are in.”

How does it translate what you say to execution?

IBM has created a cloud computing environment consisting of several layers. Voice commands are sent to cloud-based transcription and translation services which can convert an English instruction into another language such as Mandarin. In the recent demonstration the robot was asked by its human co-worker to draw some intricate Chinese word characters. It did this with ease using a calligraphy pen which it dipped repeatedly into an inkwell before returning to the writing pallet.

There is nothing unique about the robot arm being deployed. it is a pretty standard Foxconn industrial robot that operates using proprietary software developed by the manufacturer. But the messages and instructions for execution all come from IBM Watson.

As a demonstration of the potential of the integration of human and robot workers, the IBM Watson cloud interface is quite exciting. A human worker could request the robot arm to do almost anything. Translating an English-language request into the execution of a program all happens through the cloud interface. The key will be the accuracy of the voice recognition to translation.