Not long ago, Baidu’s AI developer conference was huge, showing his autonomous bus to the world, how advanced, how cool, seems to have already released on April 1, 2015 “Baidu Magic lamp” behind. Three years ago, “Baidu Magic lamp” video issued, causing many discussions, also ushered in a lot of people’s expectations, many black science and technology fans were “Baidu magic lamp” cool strength circle powder, but three years later, “Baidu magic lamp” has no news. This is just a grand imagination, or April 1 April Fool’s joke.
In the video of “Baidu Magic Lamp”, we can see that users only need to install the accessories of “Baidu Magic Lamp” on their mobile phones, download the Baidu APP, rub the edge of the phone that has been configured, and issue voice commands to turn on the “Baidu Magic Lamp search” function in the “Baidu Magic Lamp”.
“Baidu Magic Lamp” will display the search results in the form of holographic projection image on the top of the phone screen, and users can directly interact with the search results of “Baidu Magic Lamp” dynamic multiple rounds of dialogue, compared to only obtain knowledge from flat e-books, “Baidu Magic Lamp” has an advantage. “Baidu Magic Lamp” involves a total of three areas of technology, voice recognition, holographic projection technology and artificial intelligence, but from the current speed of technological development, these three areas of technology has not been fully mastered.
First, speech recognition is improving, but semantic recognition is a bit difficult
In recent years, many large enterprises at home and abroad are doing research in the field of speech recognition, and have made great breakthroughs. Iflytek, Baidu and Apple currently dominate the Chinese intelligent voice market, accounting for a combined 79 percent in 2015, with Iflytek’s market share topping 44.2 percent, according to data.
The smart home is the most widely used area for voice recognition, such as lenovo’s smart Voice box, Amazon’s Echo Show, and Apple’s HomePod. However, from the current application effect of speech recognition in smart home products, semantic recognition is still a difficult problem to achieve the multi-person interaction and dialogue demonstrated by “Baidu Magic Lamp”.
Many people will encounter situations where intelligent voice assistants cannot provide effective answers or accurate operations according to voice, which is a good example that the biggest problem in voice interaction lies in semantic understanding, that is, intelligent voice cannot accurately understand the content and purpose of conversation. In Chinese, a sentence can have many meanings, such as “have a meal” and “have a meal? “Dinner! The meaning is different with the intonation.
At the same time, some popular language such as Internet language can not be recognized, because it is an unknown semantics to intelligent speech, and people do not pay attention to their words when speaking. If such a situation appears in “Baidu Magic lamp”, it will reduce the customer experience.
Second, holographic projection is simple, but virtual touch control is difficult
Searchlight uses a holographic projection for virtual touch, much like the projection keyboard Used by KIKO in Detective Chinatown 2. But that kind of interaction is hard to achieve with today’s technology and is mostly the stuff of Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters like Tony Stark’s office in Iron Man.
What we can see on the market is basically not optical holography in the real sense. Such as jay concert and Teresa teng interaction, such as sound at the beginning of the future, day according to the holographic concert, though they are lifelike, but must be on the stage of the fixed and can be realized in the dark, the audience need to see from a particular point of view, this is actually a pepper, illusion, optical illusion. The real holographic projection is naked eye, no media, the image can be presented in the air, you can view the stereo image from 360 degrees, there are still many obstacles to achieve.
Cost is too high: the original intention of “Baidu Magic lamp” is to popularize the public, so the price can not be too expensive outrageous, or it will go against the original intention. Can do a holographic projection display mobile phone and technical requirements are too high, the cost of a small holographic cost according to video size, action strength to decide, a second 300 yuan on average, according to introducing, the light transmittance of 70% holographic film market price of 1800-2200 yuan/square meters, to research and development of time, money and energy is difficult to estimate. In 2014, Facebook and Google invested $2 billion and $500 million respectively in holographic projection, but there has been no substantial progress so far.
Medium is needed: in terms of current technology, holographic projection technology is currently limited by medium, and there is no technology that uses air as a medium to carry three-dimensional information. Even holographic projection in the lab hasn’t completely gotten rid of the medium. Therefore, want to develop in the absence of medium conditions can form a hologram in the air, is no doubt wishful thinking, let alone make it “Baidu magic lamp” so tiny accessories.
Need adequate light source: although the holographic technology and pseudo holographic technology has essential difference, but they have in common is the need to use the light source, in the reference beam and object beams under the action of two light source to form the final image, in addition to guarantee adequate light source and optical path, also make the light Angle are kept at a certain level. But the hardware configuration of “Baidu magic lamp” must be unified with mobile phones. If consumers go to places where the light source is not abundant or the Angle between the light source cannot be placed on the same horizontal plane, “Baidu magic lamp” will not be used, so that “Baidu magic lamp” will become chicken, bringing great inconvenience.
Artificial intelligence is cool, but not fully intelligent
At the Wuzhen Weiqi Summit, the world champion Ke Jie and artificial intelligence played weiqi. The result of the match made the whole world shocked, believing that human beings will be replaced by artificial intelligence as described in Stephen Hawking’s “Demon of Artificial Intelligence”. In fact, it is not, the current artificial intelligence can not achieve comprehensive intelligence, just like the ai playing chess with Ke Jie can only play chess, but “Baidu Magic Lamp” thought of achieving comprehensive intelligence, which is far from the current level of technology.
Mobile phone APP involves baidu at the same time, the control chip, only the chip installed in lamp “baidu” and the following parts to control the size of mobile phone software, but such a small chip is only available in the Japanese, and the claims to be the world’s smallest chip must use an external RFID antenna can run normally, This greatly reduces the experience and appearance of the phone.
Three congenital deficiencies, the magic lamp is far away
“Baidu magic lamp” even solved the technical problems, but also facing configuration, appearance, performance three difficult problems. These problems are related to market positioning, consumer recognition, product reputation and promotion difficulty… These problems as a group of disorderly hemp rope, interlaced, pull and move the whole body, not only rely on human and financial resources can be solved, “Baidu magic lamp” from the ground is still far away from popularity.
** Configuration problem: ** The video shows that the shape of “Baidu Magic lamp” is a mobile phone case, which has become a problem for mobile phones. In China, there are many mobile phone brands such as stars, not to mention mobile phone models, so how can this “mobile phone case” be adapted to various models? There are two solutions. First, because the performance of each model is different and the configuration required is also different, we can only select the most popular mobile phones on the market for configuration, but it will undoubtedly lose customers of other models.
Secondly, cooperation with mainstream mobile phone companies to divide interests can not only help mobile phone companies promote mobile phones on the surface, but also enable more users to use their own apps, a win-win situation. But it is not, since it is the mainstream mobile phone of course has his bright spot and advantage, and how to fear the sales decline, baidu magic lamp icing on the cake, there is no no big obstacle.
At the same time, for Baidu, the material cost of making “mobile phone case”, the problems after sales, maintenance costs, research and development funds generated by subsequent research will make the price positioning will be very high, so Baidu has to consider how to make fans buy in the case of profit.
** Appearance problems: * * before mentioned above “baidu lamp installed outside the chip needs a connection to use, now is a smart phone, even if again push back five years, everyone is straight or flip phone is used in the mobile phone, have antenna of mobile phone to the pursuit of fashionable young people now there is an antique level, do not say what performance, A lot of people won’t accept the way he looks. No matter where the external wiring on the chip is placed in the mobile phone, it is very unaesthetic. When the external wiring interacts with the mobile phone data, where should it be placed is a difficult problem that baidu’s design department needs to overcome.
Performance stability problem: the launch of “Baidu Magic Lamp” does not mean that fans will pay for it. In terms of mobile phones, we will consider the eye-catching place in addition to the priority of mobile phone performance. For example, this year’s iPhoneX is the most eye-catching than face recognition, but because it is the latest research and development, the performance is not stable, at the conference site problems, so that many loyal apple fans decisively choose the technology and performance of the mature iPhone 7.
summary
Although Baidu has advanced thinking, the blueprint for the future is too beautiful, but this era can not bear the “Baidu magic lamp” such a concept of the ship. From the technical point of view, intelligent voice is not perfect, can not distinguish semantics, often do not understand the situation when issuing instructions; And the real holographic technology is still in the research and development, the pseudo holographic technology on the market can not meet the requirements of “Baidu magic lamp”; Artificial intelligence also has a disadvantage, can only complete a single subject. “Baidu magic lamp” is required to be fully intelligent artificial intelligence technology support, from the configuration, because of chip problems, will also cause the appearance of the design is not satisfactory.
And no matter how fans and consumers are in the mood to watch this video, but only mature technology can achieve, “Baidu magic lamp” has not been successful “appear”, comrades still need to work hard ah!
Article/Liu Kuang public account, ID: Liukuang110