RealSAM awarded contract to develop for the Library of Congress

Washington DC, USA – 14 NOV 2019 Melbourne based AI developer RealSAM has been awarded a contract, up to AUS$2.9M by the Library of Congress to develop the next generation of audio book readers based in AI for people who are blind or have low vision.

The Library of Congress division – The National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled provides audio books for over 400,000 Americans through its existing technology of cartridge based players and millions more via its smartphone app. This system, however, is slow and expensive to run, and the technology is reaching the end of its life.

RealSAM is leading the world with its cloud based Artificial Intelligence engine that pairs with an android phone to provide a completely voice operated solution for finding, then streaming books. From the consumer’s point of view, it’s as easy as saying “Find me books about James Bond” to get a list of 007 books that can then be streamed.

10 year old RealSAM took a leap of faith and moved its Head of Business Development, Brendan Lewis, to the USA with his family. Three months later the investment paid off with the contract win. RealSAM also exports to the UK and is now fielding interest from around the world. Around 2.3% of the population suffers from low vision and they have found major success in an area where AI is being used for good, and doing good is good business!

RealSAM is a 100% owned subsidiary of Melbourne Artificial Intelligence developer Real Thing Entertainment. RealSAM provides a friendly voice operated assistant, media player & phone – designed for people with blindness or low vision. It operates in Australia, the UK and now the USA.

Real Thing Entertainment announced today that it will be opening a US branch to pursue US opportunities on the 1st August 2019. Brendan Lewis, Head of Business Development will be transferring to Washington DC to kick things off.

Brendan Lewis said “Im thrilled to introduce our RealSAM product to visually impaired users in the US, there is nothing like it there and it appears Im not the only person getting excited!”

With Partners O2 Telefonica and the Royal National Institute of Blind People,   Real Thing Entertainment has launched our REalSAM device in the UK as  RealSAM : In Your Pocket.

With access to over 100,00 audio books and hundreds of talking newspapers and magazines, In Your Pocket is a unique and life changing technology.

A customer success office has been setup in Peterborough, near the RNIB library.

Real Thing CEO, Nick Howden was recently interviewed by several magazines to discuss the issues and dilemmas around the use of artificial intelligence arising from the recent sci-fi thriller movie, Chappie.

Men’s magazine Maxim explored the pros and cons and impacts of AI in our lives, as well as the future directions and moral issues arising from our growing use of AI.  Read the article at the link below.

http://www.maxim.com.au/archives/4826

Tech Magazine PC Tech Authority explored with Nick, the potential problems and possible negative outcomes that might emerge from human’s increasing reliance on artificial intelligence and technology.  Some of these potentially dangerous scenarios were highlighted in the movie Chappie.

http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/405498,not-quite-human-the-future-of-intelligence.aspx

Tech Magazine, PC Power Play, was interested in how close we are to replicating and duplicating (or uploading and backing-up) the human mind into an artificial intelligence, as depicted in Chappie and how far we are from ‘truly self aware AI’.  The article also explores with Nick, the fascinating issues around whether we as humans can responsibly create and control AI, as well as other interesting AI dilemmas.  Read it in full at the link below.

http://www.pcpowerplay.com.au/news/not-quite-human-the-future-of-intelligence,405498

Once again, we took RealSAM to the RSB ‘Tech Fest’ in Adelaide at the end of May, an event which displays and demonstrates the latest adaptive technology and includes a program of talks.  Nick had a great time, demonstrating SAM to lots of interested Tech Fest visitors, and giving a talk on the technology.   As usual the event was a great success, we met lots of interesting people and had a very positive response to RealSAM accessibility technology.  See you there next year!

We are excited to be taking RealSAM on the road again, to Vision Australia’s Texpo in Melbourne, Kooyong on the 10th and 11th of October and Enfield, Sydney on the 17th and 18th of October.

Formerly held in September, Vision Australia has moved the Texpo events to October in order to coincide with two awareness days, World Sight Day and White Cane Day, and hence create a “Vision Week”.

We will be delighted to demonstrate RealSAM to you, and this time RealSAM will be available for sale at Texpo!  You can check out how simple SAM is to use, and how accessible newspapers, podcasts and newsfeeds are through RealSAM.

We can also show you our prototype book reading and navigation functions, which are currently under production, and will be available in the near future.

Hope to see you there!

Real Thing is proud to announce that we have successfully secured an ARC Linkage Grant with RMIT University.

“Spoken Conversational Search: Contextual interactive techniques to support effective information search over a speech-only communication channel.”

Speech interaction with machines and mobile devices is becoming a ubiquitous reality. However, the challenge of effective discovery and presentation of search results over a speech-only channel has not received much attention from the Information Retrieval research community.

This project proposes developing effective search via speech by developing an interactive conversational approach, particularly for intent recognition and result presentation. Such techniques will be transformational for universal information access, enabling efficient and effective access where visual display of results is unavailable: e.g. use by the visually impaired, or situations requiring hands-free operation, such as driving or operating machinery.

Investigators: Dr. Lawrence Cavedon (RMIT), Prof. Mark Sanderson (RMIT), Prof. Lin Padgham (RMIT), Prof. Bruce Croft (Uni. Massachussetts at Amherst), Nick Howden (Realthing Entertainment Pty Ltd)

Funder: Australian Research Council, Linkage Projects Scheme

We were pleased to have the opportunity to go to Adelaide recently for the Royal Society for the Blind ‘Tech Fest’ (29-30 May).  We had a great time demonstrating RealSAM and meeting lots of interesting people.

Tech Fest is a fantastic opportunity to showcase our assistive technology and see what others in the field are doing.  Without a doubt we look forward to exhibiting again in 2015.