By the end of 2018, the child is more accustomed to tap on the screen of the tablet than to turn the pages of the book, and virtual reality technology is used so that children do not fear vaccinations . Robots Santa Claus has become a matter of time.



You can, of course, wait for the appearance of Robotsants from “Futurama”, but too far to the XXXI century. We decided to hurry time and imagine what a Robomoroz of the near future could be. Binary District course speakers will tell you what Frost will look like, how she will communicate with children, and what problems she will face when digitizing it.

Why do we need Santa Claus

First of all, we define what tasks Santa Claus solves. If we speak in the language of business, we will try to build the client's path of the child, in which the main goal is to get the desired gift.

In an ideal world, a child diligently learns and behaves well throughout the year. By the end of the year, the results and successes are validated, the child chooses a gift and writes a letter to Santa Claus. The gift is bought, delivered and handed. Often, in order to get your surprise, the child needs to complete several tasks on the New Year tree.

There are three stages in which Santa Claus is directly involved: communication with the child, selection of a gift and holding a Christmas tree, at which this gift is presented.

Letter to Robomoroz: text recognition and Alice

Perhaps, everyone in childhood wrote letters to Santa Claus to tell about their successes for the year and ask for a well-deserved gift. Now children start typing earlier than writing by hand. It seems that it would be logical to implement communication through chat. However, Mikhail Fedosov, the product designer at Sberbank and the speaker of the course Product Design Weekend , believes that tactile sensations and the development of fine motor skills are important for children.

“The best solution is to leave a letter by hand and use text recognition features. In the case of children's written text, this will be more difficult, but today's possibilities in the field of AI make it possible to implement such functionality. And to create an atmosphere of magic will help us augmented reality, which with the help of the camera of the smartphone will visualize the sending of the letter on the smartphone to the mother Santa Claus "

Children also like to communicate with voice assistants and sometimes treat them as family members. And verbal communication is an equally important part of a child’s development.

“Creating a separate voice assistant hardly makes sense, since Santa Claus is a seasonal story. This is where scripts fit into existing assistants. For example, for Alice, it would be possible to create an appropriate New Year's skill, where she would communicate with the child in the voice of Santa Claus and respond to the triggers with the wishes of the child. ”

Gift picking: NLP and marketplace

The second task that Robomrosis will have to perform is to pick up a gift. You can buy and deliver gifts through marketplaces and online stores that act as partners. NLP technology will cope with the extraction of information, and artificial intelligence will pick up a gift of interest. Anna Vlasova, the head of the Neuro-Linguistic Laboratory "Nanosemantics" and the speaker of the course AI for Business , believes that Robomoroz’s possibilities will not be limited to this.

“At the business level, Robomoroz can collect data and analyze it. Of course, also using modern technologies: from clustering requests to trained neural networks. For example, the first wave of communications with Robomoroz can correct expectations for the popularity of certain toys, identify correlations between brands and the gender of eager gifts and get a lot of other information. This will help gift makers get better for the holiday next year. ”

Alexander Polomodov, head of development in the management of attraction in Tinkoff.ru and curator of the course Teamlead Weekend , is of the opinion that Robomoroz can not only help with the choice of a gift, but also adjust the budget for it depending on the success of the child.

“Parents often give gifts to their children as a prize following the results of the outgoing year: for school grades, achievements in sports, music, and so on. This can be tied to money that is gradually deposited over the course of the year. So it will be possible to avoid unnecessary spending in the last month and to give New Year's gifts, corresponding to the achievements of children "

Christmas tree: Face ID and AR

It remains the long-awaited - delivery. The child himself either finds the cherished box on New Year's morning, or receives it personally from the hands of Santa Claus at the New Year's matinee. Technology and here will find application.

Alexander Polomodov proposes to make animation and interactive through augmented reality: the presentation will be based on scripts, and the interactive - on voice recognition and NLP.

Mikhail Fedosov adds that a gift can be not only something tangible, but also something digital. For example, the skin for weapons from CS: GO or the gear for the hero from Dota 2. So the morning trees can turn into a kind of Pokemon Go, in which children are looking for their gifts.

If we talk directly about the robotic character of Santa Claus, then there are many restrictions, says Mikhail Fedosov.

“Robomoroz should not be like a living character, but rather like a doll or a real robot. This is due to the effect of the “sinister valley” : a robot or other object that looks or acts like a human, but not exactly like the real one, causes dislike and disgust in humans. The materials of which the robot is made also matter. Children love to touch everything, for them tactile sensations are a way to explore the world. It is also worth remembering that the robot can be quite heavy, so for security reasons, the functionality of Robomoroz will be limited to sitting by the Christmas tree. Children can sit on his knees, read poems, communicate. And Robomoroz will determine through Face ID, who reads to him, and use AI to evaluate the poem read. ”

Children at matinees not only read poems and participate in contests, but also ask for gifts for the New Year. In the case when children talk about their wishes directly, it is not necessary to use a neural network, says Anna Vlasova.

“This can be done with the help of rule-based systems, or with the help of a trained neural network. It is more convenient to do the collection, classification and transfer of wishes for gifts using the rules, but you can try different options. Wishes are formed in the list and sent to parents. True, parents are unlikely to be happy if someone realizes it. ”

Monetization: advertising and data

First of all, on Robomrosis, I can earn those who already have their voice assistants - for example, Google, Amazon or Yandex. As a model of monetization - contextual advertising in the recommendatory giving out gifts for a child. For example, Yandex and Sberbank have Beru, so Alice can issue a direct link to her marketplace. Amazon with its own store will be able to organize both the purchase and delivery of goods through Alexa.

The owners of Robomoroz will also be able to sell statistics on requests to manufacturers of goods and toys, so that they can better prepare for the next New Year.

If we talk about events involving Robomoroz, the same Steam could act as a partner and release gift sets for the new year's AR-games.

This model monetization Robomoroz certainly will not be limited. The only problem is the seasonality of such a product. Therefore, most likely, only large corporations with ready-made similar solutions can afford such Robomoroz.