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04/28/2024 03:50:30 pm

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Smart CogniToy for Kids has the Big Brain of IBM's Watson Supercomputer

Smart and cute

(Photo : Elemental Path) CogniToy's green Dino smart toy

How would you like a smart, talking toy for your child that teaches and taps into the brain of the smartest supercomputer on Earth?

Of course, you would and a startup named Elemental Path has done just that.

It revealed a line of smart toys with the brand name CogniToy. The first CogniToy revealed at the just ended New York Toy Fair was Dino, an immobile, plastic talking dinosaur with a big button in its belly.

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Elemental Path claims Dino's the first children's toy that has IBM's powerful Watson cognitive computing system as its brain. Dino's wirelessly connected to Watson via IBM's cognitive cloud service over the internet.

When a child talks, Dino listens and responds using information provided by Watson. The cognitive toy can teach children to spell, count and broaden their vocabulary. It even tells jokes. The toy delivers age-appropriate content when it converses with children.

Better yet, this engaging toy monitors a child's progress and will ask more sophisticated questions and give detailed answers as a child progresses. A CogniToy also learns a child's personality traits and preferences such as his or her favorite color, making it friendlier.

A video from Elemental Path shows children asking Dino questions to which the cognitive toy responds without hesitation. Dino uses Friendgine, Elemental's proprietary voice recognition software, to talk with children. Its voice has been described as similar to that of Yoda, the pint-sized Jedi master in the Star Wars movies.

Dino is the first in a line of upcoming cognitive toys from Elemental Path.

The startup aims to make Dino available by November for just $89. The company is trying to raise $50,000 on Kickstarter to make to toys available in November.

Watson is an artificially intelligent computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language. It was specifically developed by IBM to answer questions on the quiz show Jeopardy! In 2011, Watson defeated two former winners on Jeopardy! for the first place prize of $1 million.

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