Samsung unveiled an early version of its Samsung Architecture for Multimodal Interactions (SAMI) platform last week. The idea is that this platform would collect data from any connected device and share it with other connected devices. Particularly interesting is that the presentation was delivered by Luc Julia, a former Apple director who worked on the Siri project for about 10 months before leaving the company last year.
SAMI is envisaged as a common platform that can collect and store data from any device in its original format. The data is “normalized” so that it can be made available to other apps as a data feed.
Julia demonstrated how SAMI might work in the future by wearing a Fitbit and wearable heart monitor. He weighed himself on an Internet-connected scale and pretended to do an exercise routine by running around the stage a few times. SAMI collected the data from the different apps. When Julia asked, “SAMI, how am I doing?” the app told him that he had reached his exercise goal for the day.
SAMI shares a number of points in common with Julia’s former project. Both SAMI and Siri collect data from various services and present a relevant subset of data through a single app. But Samsung hopes to make its platform as “open” as possible, enabling other companies to take advantage of it and extend its reach to further devices and services.
Samsung is even open to the idea that another company could eventually host the service should it find that adoption is hindered by trust and competition issues with other companies.
The project is only about six months old but Samsung is already working with about 50 partners, including Fitbit and smartwatch maker Pebble.
SAMI is still a few years away from being ready. Julia would only say that “You’ll be able to play around with it when Samsung thinks it’s ready for people to see it.”
Source : Macworld