This paper appears in:
IBM Journal of Research and Development
Date of Publication:
May-June 2012
Author(s):
Lewis, B. L.
IBM Research Division, Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, USA
Volume: 56,
Issue: 3.4
On Page(s):
17:1
-
17:6
Product Type:
Journals & Magazines
Abstract
To play as a contestant in Jeopardy!™, IBM Watson™ needed an interface program to handle the communications between the Jeopardy! computers that operate the game and its own components: question answering, game strategy, speech, buzzer, etc. Because Watson cannot hear or see, when the categories and clues were displayed on the game board, they were also sent electronically to Watson. The program also monitored signals generated when the buzzer system was activated and when a contestant successfully rang in. If Watson was confident of its answer, it triggered a solenoid to depress its buzzer button and used a text-to-speech system to speak its response. Since it did not hear the host's judgment, it relied on changes to the scores and the game flow to infer whether its answer was correct. The interface program had to use what were sometimes conflicting events to determine the state of the game without any human intervention.
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ISSN : 0018-8646
Digital Object Identifier : 10.1147/JRD.2012.2188932
Date of Current Version :
Tue Apr 03 00:00:00 EDT 2012
Issue Date :
May-June 2012
Sponsored by :
IBM
Available to subscribers and IEEE members.
Available to subscribers and IEEE members.