Munich Airport has teamed up with Lufthansa to trial a humanoid robot, developed by SoftBank Robotics, which provides information to passengers.
In Terminal 2, Josie Pepper the robot will be directing people to their gate and answering questions about restaurants and shops. In the initial deployment, Josie Pepper, who will speak to passengers in English, will await them at the top of the ramp leading to a shuttle connecting the main terminal to the satellite building. This test phase will show whether the robot is accepted by passengers.
Josie Pepper uses IBM Watson Internet of Things (IoT) cloud-based artificial intelligence technologies. Moreover, the robot’s core contains a high-performance processor with WLAN internet access, which creates a connection to a cloud service where speech is processed, interpreted and linked to the airport data.
The robot does not just deliver predefined texts, but is also able to answer each question individually. With its ability to learn, the system will get better at combining questions with the relevant information to provide more precise replies.
