For 23 years now, IBM has held the most patents out of any company.
I was asked to create a serie of 4 gifs for IBMblr (IBM Tumblr page), to highlight a few of the more innovative patents from the past year, and representing them in a fun way.
Here they are, with related articles.
Client: IBM
Agency: Ogilvy New York
My role: Illustration and motion design
Art director: Eddie Pak
Project manager: Ashley Holmes
_February 2016
Creating machines that mimic the brain:
Super small yet perfectly poised to outthink chip technology as we know it: Patent No. 8977583 is a highly efficient chip that’s not only built to resemble the brain, but to behave in ways like one too. It all happens through (wait for it) neuromorphic and synaptronic computation – in other words, the actions of a million artificial nerve cells. With this tiny chip, we’ll be able to cram more cognition and processing power into small devices like phones, hearing aids and watches to make them think better, faster and on-the-fly like humans.
Effective communications at international travel venues:
Attention all monolingual wanderlusters: IBM Patent No. 9015032 is here to make overseas travel a whole lot easier.
How? First by identifying the languages it “hears” from microphones placed throughout the airport, then by translating flight info into these languages for display and PA announcements. Could this mean the end of mad gate dashes from airport bars worldwide? Probably not. Or should we say, probablement pas, osoraku arimasen, wahrscheinlich nicht, probablemente…
Helping machines understand emotion:
In today’s cognitive era, machines can listen and talk back to us. But can they understand the emotional nuances of our conversations? You betcha – with IBM’s Patent No. 9117446. This system detects and assigns emotion to text in TTS (text to speech) applications, so machines can read and express emotion in response to what we say, how we say it, our facial expressions and body language.
Giving machines good judgment:
We’ve all been served up search results we weren’t sure about, whether they were for “the best tacos in town” or “how to tell if your dog has eaten chocolate.” With IBM Patent no. 9087304, you no longer have to second-guess the answers you’re given. This new tech helps cognitive machines find the best potential answers to your questions by thinking critically about the trustworthiness and accuracy of each source. Simply put, these machines can use their own judgment to separate the right information from wrong.
