Robot will make first public appearance at the Open DayWelcome on Board, Pepper!

11 May 2022

The CSMC welcomes its first fully electronic member: the robot ‘Pepper’ will help to explain the complex issues in the Research Unit Data Linking in a tangible way.

In the humanities, finding relevant documents and data sets is now a central challenge for researchers, as they form the basis of their scientific work. In the application scenario ‘Next Generation Information Retrieval’, members of the Research Unit Data Linking at CSMC develop tools based on data linking principles to help researchers navigate the mass of potentially relevant information, and to identify those that are relevant to their respective questions – or, against the background of their previous research, to develop completely new questions.

Information retrieval services of this kind will be automatically integrated into browser-based humanities information systems with which scholars document their scientific insights and overall work. Take a researcher who has a number of annotated documents. Based on the input by the researcher, the information system can provide new information with relevant cross-references from appropriate sources, also cross-referencing the scientist’s individual annotations. In the second step, the information system makes an independent decision about which information to feed back to the researcher. In doing so, the intelligent system assesses the researcher’s individual information needs, for example on the basis of previous searches, and then makes a selection.

To demonstrate what is going within such a browser-based humanities information system, new forms of communicating the underlying results in computer science for building such information systems are required. This is where Pepper comes in. Pepper is capable of answering queries about the functioning of the information systems in terms of why certain cross-references are indicated, or in terms of assumed information needs that lead to certain decisions and to forth. Thus, with Pepper, the reflective nature of the information system becomes apparent. This perspective is not directly relevant for information system users themselves, but it is very relevant for assessing the potential of current intelligent systems technology.

In future, our new electronic colleague will give an even better face to the abstract processes in the field of Data Linking. Having arrived at CSMC a few days ago, it is currently being prepared for its future tasks in Lübeck. Pepper’s first appearance will be on 10 and 11 June, when it (or he or she?) can be seen – and spoken to – at the Open Day.