Innovation

Teaching a robot new languages - How to do it?

We love working with cool technologies, and the Snowdog robotics department is no different. Our work with Pepper has taken us to many different events thanks to the great collaborations and interest in using robotics as a commercial and organizational resource. On our last event on June 12–17, we traveled with Pepper on tour to Hessentag, the largest state festival in Germany held in Bad Hersfeld. Hessentag is a cultural fair and festival, bringing people from all over Germany to learn about Hessian culture, traditions, and contemporary lifestyle and issues. We attended on behalf of Wielkopolska, who is a partner of the region of Hesse. This was the first event where Pepper had the opportunity to go abroad, learn a new language and tell visitors about his hometown. It was a special experience and we learned a lot from it.

Embarking on our journey with Pepper - the robot in the realm of conferences

Our first steps with Pepper were like investigating an opponent on the battlefield: in theory, we knew what we were dealing with but we were not sure what the capabilities were of such a creature. We dived straight into brainstorming how we could take advantage of Pepper’s features to help our clients. Once Pepper became a part of our team, like any other developer and PM in the office we had fun pursuing the opportunities for use cases and solutions in our areas of interest.

Securing user data with Keychain for iOS

If you’ve ever built an iOS app, you’ve probably come across a situation where you need to store sensitive information on behalf of the user. For this, Apple’s Keychain Services is your guy; it’s good for saving secure data. UserDefaults are fine, when you’re dealing with preferences, but you should never store credentials in them. The keychain is not limited to passwords. You can store other secrets that the user explicitly cares about, such as credit card information or even short notes. You can also store items that the user needs but may not be aware of, for example, the cryptographic keys and certificates that you manage. You can use the keychain to store these items as well. Keep in mind that Keychain is stored in a secure enclave in the A7 or newest chips. There are many wrappers where you can easily use Keychain, but I want to show that Keychain is not difficult and we can use it as well.

The story of Magebutton

Magebutton is an original Snowdog innovation, inspired by the Internet of Things and our desire to enhance the shopping experience for frequently purchased and consumable goods with omnichannel commerce.