IBM Engineer builds sorting hat powered by Watson
Here Ryan Anderson tests out the sorting hat. Image captured from a test video.
One of the most recognizable icons from the Harry Potter series is the Hogwarts sorting hat. So an IBM engineer decided to make one for his daughters powered by Watson.
According to an article from The Next Web, engineer Ryan Anderson made the sorting hat as a fun project to introduce his two daughters to Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) education.
The sorting hat is powered by the Watson Natural Language Classifier and Speech to Text to allow users to verbally interact with the hat. The hat then sorts users based on what they say into the four houses of Hogwarts.
His daughters assisted him in coding the hat by adding established ground truths that the hat can reference to when picking out words that fit the characteristics of each house. Deep learning then figures out more attributes to expand the known qualities that each house possesses every time the hat is worn.
While it doesn’t look like much yet, Anderson programmed the hat to move and talk to the wearer like the actual sorting hat would. Alfred Bayle
