NTT DOCOMO in partnership with the TOMY Company have jointly developed OHaNAS, an interactive voice-activated toy for children and adults as part of its "+d" initiative. The device links wirelessly with smartphones to connect to DOCOMO's proprietary cloud-based natural-language dialogue platform. OHaNAS (Organized Human interface and Network Artificial intelligence System) is targeted at families with children of ages eight or older, allowing simple conversations with the device regarding topics such as personal information, meal suggestions, music playback, fortune telling, weather information, Q&As and more.
According to DOCOMO, this is the first adaptation of DOCOMO's natural-language dialogue platform by a third party. DOCOMO's natural-language dialogue platform was based on technologies developed for the company's Shabette ConcierTM voice-agent service for smartphones. It is capable of analyzing a wide variety of expressions and word patterns to determine the core meaning of a person's spoken communication in Japanese. As an open platform, it can be efficiently tailored for third-party services and products by coding specific dialogue patterns. DOCOMO plans to adapt the platform for Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, including automobiles and home appliances, to enable smooth voice communication between users and machines.
