New applications for artificial intelligence (AI) technology is being discovered every day. One of the latest is how AI is being utilized to train service dogs for the visually impaired. This interesting information came to us from WNYT out of Albany, New York in their article, “Artificial intelligence helps train guide dogs for the blind.”
This new application is meeting a need. The world population of the blind is expected to triple by 2050. The University of North Carolina, Guiding Eyes for the Blind and IBM have teamed up to find the best training candidates through the use of AI. Each guide dog taking part in the research has a sensor on their collar that’s collecting data, including how the dog is moving, the temperature of the surroundings, and the frequency of the noises the dog makes. That data is collected on an app and analyzed by IBM’s Watson supercomputer using machine learning.
Because of the cost of training is upwards of $50,000 per dog, it is important to gather as much information as possible before selecting the animal.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
