Published on September 21, 2016
(Image Courtesy: forbes.com, wsj.com)
Definition and outcome of innovation have kept on evolving over centuries starting from 3500 B.C. after invention of wheels and till today. Invention of wheel was to facilitate humans in the system of that time. And when technology invents something that touches real world use case, it brings revolution by all means!
If we talk about the current trend of technology where the world is heading towards; it’s about solving real life problems, being interactive, staying connected, give peace of mind in humans’ routines and allow them to focus on something more creative and of their choice.
IoT is no longer a buzzword in 2016 like it was in 2014 but is now well accepted as a successful concept that is solving large number of real world use cases.
But the proof is in the pudding! The value is in answers and not in data!
It is extremely important to translate IoT derived data into interactive form and user friendly language to solve customized questions. And this is where BOT takes you sail!
BOT are interactive and intelligent programs that…
- Interact with users through voice, text or images.
- Consists of scripts written by developers (or may be non-developers) that uses readily available BOT framework in most cases.
- Accept keywords and take next step of action by processing those keywords or conversations.
- Process captured information for further processing via BOT framework (engine).
- Converts the input into simplified format (e.g. NPS (Natural Language Processing)).
- Sends data to cloud to enterprise system APIs for next level of action.
- Drive at the other end via internet on websites, mobile devices, IoT, wearables, sensors and more…
- BOTs are / can be further extended for achieving real world use cases in domains like healthcare and medicine, banking/financial, home automation (smart homes), connected automobile, traffic management, retail, agriculture, education, supply chain management, water management, smart cities, waste management and many more.
As BOTs are complex programs, processing engines (framework) are developed by IT giants and made available that allow developers and also non developers to write BOT programs comfortably. Well known BOT framework are:
- Microsoft BOT framework (BOT connector and LUIS.ai)
- Facebook BOT engine (uses Wit.ai which got acquired by Facebook in 2015).
- VIV.ai (co-founded by authors of Siri, 1st demo in May 2016 and early to comment)
Looking at the trend, mobile apps are becoming old fashioned! BOT is HOT! Only Facebook chatbot messenger platform has more than 11,000 BOT programs available now! Interesting! Isn’t it! Facebook messenger is no longer standalone messenger but is now based on Facebook chatbot engine! Burger king has released FB Messenger chatbot for ordering through FB. Many other ventures also have their chatbot apps for this use case. Amazon Echo is gaining a lot of traction through large number of available interactive programs on Alexa Skill Store and also featuring further customizations through AVS (Alexa Voice Service) APIs, BOTs are leveraging use cases of making payments, sending personalized news on demand, allows shopping and purchasing, shares local weather information as asked, buy air tickets, get legal assistance and many many more!
BOT marrying Cloud and now Sky is also Not the Limit!
Enjoy BOTs! It’s the technology worth enjoying!
