Inspiration
We were inspired by this (https://youtu.be/CQbkhYg2DzM)
What it does
Ivy is a virtual assistant you can see (as a 3d hologram). You can talk to her as though she is a real person and she will interact with you. You can ask her about information such as weather, stocks, flight information and sports scores. She can even tell you jokes. As an added bonus, she can send the data you ask her right to your phone so you are always notified.
How we built it
Ivy is powered by IBM Watson to handle conversations and artificial intelligence. We taught her a bunch of things and she picked it up using machine learning. The web app was built using Node.js, Ember.js HTML, and CSS. We also used the Twilio API to handle mobile notifications. Ivy was hosted and deployed using Bluemix.
The actual hologram is displayed using a clear prism that we built, placed atop a screen running the web app.
Challenges we ran into
IBM Watson does a terrible job mixing plain Javascript with Node.js, and this caused a lot of problems for us as relatively simple problems took incredibly complex solutions.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Building a hologram that works, looks cool, and is powered by artificial intelligence.
What we learned
We learned that Javascript is a really messy - but powerful - language. We also got the chance to build a practical artificial intelligence.
What's next for Ivy
We want to make Ivy into a complete virtual assistant. We want to make it so that a user can text Ivy for questions and she will respond to answers just like she would when you talk to her (similar to a text based chat bot). But even more practical, we want to push our artificial intelligence platform paired with the hologram technology to make Ivy an actual assistant that can be used in public spaces. For example, a holographic librarian (just like in the video above) that a visitor can walk up to and ask questions. We feel as though this technology has a lot of potential in the real world, we just need to scale up. Very exciting stuff.
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