Who She Is

Ohgee (Google "ogee magilla gorilla") is a small desktop robot who excels at interacting with people.  

What She Does

Ohgee detects faces and elides them with a smiley, frown or "meh" icon, depending on their expression.

She  uses speech-to-text to listen and converse, responding to the sentiment of heard speech.

She responds to a large number of known phrases and shows images of things that she hears you describe.

Her heart glows green, red or blue to show the prevalent sentiment of the current interaction.

What She Is

Ohgee runs several processes that encapsulate

• Video capture & Google Cloud Vision client
• Audio capture & Google Cloud Speech client
• Google Language Client
• Servo, display and Image Search client

                                   Ohgee's source can be found on github

How She Does

Ohgee uses Google Cloud Vision for image analysis, filtering captured video frames through a motion detector, trained at startup, to avoid sending redundant images to the cloud.  She uses Google Cloud Speech and Google Cloud Language for speech analysis, filtering captured audio through a "silence detector", trained at startup.

She sends "described nouns" (adjective + noun pairs) to google image (safe) search to call forth images such as pretty flowers, fast airplanes, and cute robots.

Here’s a high level diagram of the components and services involved

Where She Is

As well as on my desk at home, there's an Ohgee in the reception area of Google's NYC Chelsea Market office where she's an ice breaker to guests approaching the reception desk.  She's reportedly raised the spirits of some tense and somber visitors.