In September, Sberbank held a major presentation, within the framework of which it not only announced the rebranding of its ecosystem (and is now called Sberbank), but presented a new development strategy. Now it is an IT company that develops services and releases devices. "Lenta.ru" tells what gadgets Sberbank presented and what is their main feature.
Three in one
The main thing that unites all Sber devices is the Salyut family of virtual assistants. This is not an ordinary talker capable of responding to basic commands and telling about the air temperature outside the window, but a powerful tool that can make an appointment with a doctor, transfer money to relatives or pay for a mobile connection. In the future, the skills will grow even more, as the company has made the assistant available to third-party developers.
Strictly speaking, Salute is three assistants in one. Sber, Joy, and Athena have different personalities and give different answers to questions. They have the same skill set, but the key difference is in presentation. For example, Sber is more restrained and unobtrusive, Joy is cheerful, with high emotional intelligence, and Athena is more collected and calm.
All three assistants can maintain a conversation in a manner typical for each of the assistants, as well as perform the user's tasks. In addition to the banking operations already mentioned, they can play music or a movie, order food, find help information and issue personalized answers. The latter is realized due to the fact that Sberbank, Joy and Athena are proactive and are themselves interested in the user's tastes, forming a portrait of the person with whom they communicate.
Virtual assistants will be available in Sberbank Online and Sber Salyut applications, as well as built into smart devices from Sber - SberBox and SberPortal. In the future, this system will combine all the ecosystem services in one window.
Surprise box
The first independent device with Salute's assistants was the SberBox media attachment. This small box connects to your TV via HDMI and is hidden from view, but turns any screen into an entertainment center for the whole family. The gadget allows you to watch movies, listen to music, play games and solve everyday tasks with virtual assistants. There is the greatest variety of functions for Salute assistants, that is, a virtual assistant will help with an appointment at a beauty salon or clinic, order snacks, find a movie or turn on a TV channel, answer questions, show a step-by-step video recipe.
But there is one more feature that has not been found in any similar device. With the attachment, you can buy things that are worn by the heroes of the film, and souvenirs. Artificial intelligence recognizes what is happening on the screen and at any time the user can pause the film in order to pick up clothes like the heroes of the film or buy thematic souvenirs.
In addition to films and series, the set-top box can run ordinary TV channels through the channel provider "Smotrёshka". There are 185 digital TV channels available via Wi-Fi. After the end of the trial period, 20 channels from the first multiplex remain free. The music is accessed through the SberSvuk streaming service with a collection of 40 million tracks. When using the service, Salyut's virtual assistants can search for tracks by title, artist or album, control playback and like to improve the recommendation system. And he can also launch the "Sing along" mode, in which the text of the composition with a synchronous line change will be shown on the screen.
“TV is the largest screen in every home, however, its capabilities are now limited, in fact, by the consumption of video content. However, if you introduce into it a modern virtual assistant and the extensive capabilities of the Sberbank ecosystem, you will get a completely new device that your living room has never seen. That was our plan when we started working on SberBox, and we are glad that everything worked out. In addition, this concept has huge potential - we are already working to increase the number of useful and necessary interaction scenarios, ”says Konstantin Kruglov, CEO of SberDevices.
Separately, SberDevices took care of games on SberBox. So, there are casual games that can be controlled with the included remote control, like SwimOut, 2048 and Golf Peaks. But the kit also includes special joysticks that can be attached to the smartphone screen, and then the phone will become a full-fledged gamepad for the console. SberBox has an open platform, and any developer can create an application to work with the set-top box. Therefore, more games and programs will appear in the future.
SberPortal is a completely different device. This is not just a TV set-top box, but a full-fledged smart display with built-in acoustics and powerful hardware. In Russia, this is the first product of this category, combining multimedia capabilities, advanced acoustics, video calls, voice assistant skills and the ability to control smart home functions.
The portal has a 10-inch FullHD-screen, Harman / Kardon acoustics and a wide-angle camera. The developers have provided that the device can be controlled not only by touching the touch screen, but also by voice and gestures. Voice control works with a system of six microphones that recognize commands from a long distance and can hear the user even in noisy environments. In addition, the microphones can be turned off by pressing a special button that physically breaks the power circuit.With the help of gestures, you can activate the assistant, like the track, stop the music or quickly mute the sound. This technology is implemented jointly with VisionLabs and does not require any additional sensors - everything is read by a built-in camera. And the processing of the video stream takes place directly on the SberPortal hardware platform with a neuroprocessor, that is, this data does not go anywhere and remains on the device.
Using the camera, you can make video calls, in which the function of automatically holding the user in the center of the frame works. The system tracks the position of a person in the frame and follows him, cropping and zooming in if he moves away or, conversely, approaches.
Otherwise, SberPortal runs on the StarOS platform developed by SberDevices, which offers a variety of multimedia experiences: you can watch movies and videos, listen to music and play games. Third party developers can also participate in the development of the platform.
SberPortal is a device unique not only for the Russian, but also for the world market. Perhaps no other smart display has so many innovations and innovations implemented at once. We managed not only to equip the device with modern capabilities, but also to make it so that they work together in convenient user scenarios. No element ended up here by accident, every detail serves a different purpose in multiple scenarios. SberPortal is an example of the well-coordinated work of many companies in the Sber ecosystem. In addition to integrated user services, research laboratories and other companies of the ecosystem took part in the creation of the device.