We already have robots serving us in different industries: they build our cars, entertain the family, and defuse bombs. A new bot has emerged from IBM’s labs as a result of collaboration with Hilton Worldwide—the first Watson-enabled robot concierge in the hospitality industry, Connie. Connie, named for Hilton’s founder Conrad Hilton, represents the first time IBM has developed a Watson-enabled robot for the hospitality sector. The automaton can already be found in the Hilton McLean hotel in Virginia, where it will work with Hilton’s team members as a regular concierge, answering questions about nearby restaurants, tourist attractions, and hotel information. Connie will not be able to check guests in to the hotel. The 23-inch wonder (that’s 58 centimeters) has as physical support Nao, a French-made android (Aldebaran) that has become the first platform used for educational and customer care tasks, partly because its relative affordability—approximately $9,000. Connie is more about brains than looks though as its brain is based on IBM’s flagship AI program Watson, the Jeopardy!-winning system engineered to understand people’s questions and answer them. Connie’s brain uses a combination of Watson APIs, including Dialog, Speech to Text, Text to Speech, Text to Speech and Natural Language Classifier, enabling it to greet guests upon arrival, and to answer questions about the hotel’s amenities, services and hours of operation. The information on local attractions and interesting sites is actually channeled from the travel platform WayBlazer’s database, also an IBM partners. What’s more interesting is how Connie improves itself through interactions with human customers, learning how to fine-tune its recommendations. “This project with Hilton and WayBlazer represents an important shift in human-machine interaction, enabled by the embodiment of Watson’s cognitive computing,” said Rob High, IBM fellow and vice president and chief technology officer for IBM Watson....