A software engineer formally involved in the development of the Siri voice assistant at Apple has joined Samsung’s new talking internet of things initiative.
Luc Julia, vice president of Samsung’s innovation lab and a former Siri engineer, presented the company’s multi-device data collation initiative, Samsung Architecture for Multimodal Interactions (SAMI), which aims to collect data from devices like fitness trackers and wearable computers and make that data available to other devices and services, including via voice in a very similar manner to Apple’s Siri.
Julia left Apple to join Samsung in 2012, after being part of the developer team responsible for Apple’s voice assistant Siri.
During a presentation in Menlo Park, California last week, Julia demonstrated how SAMI could collect data from a Fitbit fitness tracker, as well as an internet-connected weigh scale and provide a report on your overall activity – something that wasn’t previously possible with the information isolated within each device’s application.
In Siri-like fashion, Julia asked "SAMI, how am I doing?", with the app responding that he had reached his exercise goal for the day.
Forming part of the company’s push for enhanced software development, Samsung hopes that SAMI will be able to unite disparate connected devices, especially with the explosion of wearable devices. It is currently working with around 50 partners to develop and test SAMI, including Fitbit and the Pebble smartwatch, and has a $100m fund for the next three years to support companies developing relevant technology.
Source: Gizmag
