PotBot app to launch in late October
Plans to include facial recognition, voice in the works
08 October, 2015
category: Biometrics
PotBot is a medical cannabis recommendation engine developed by Potbotics Inc. The software and tech company has been in business since early 2014 and its mission is to educate patients about medical cannabis.
Along with education about marijuana, Potbotics enables kiosks to help dispense information about strains. Soon the company plans to make voice and face recognition an option at kiosks. While face recognition will be used for identity verification, voice recognition would include conversations with a virtual assistant.
The company is inputting proper terminology so the kiosk can recognize the name of a particular strain or an ailment the patient is describing. “We have a natural language program in place. We just don’t feel like it’s scalable just yet,”says David Goldstein, CEO and cofounder of Potbotics. “We’re still building out those cannabis terms so the system will always pick up on them.”
The primary aim of Potbotics is to help patients get information. When a doctor prescribes cannabis, the patient has to choose which strain to use. Over a thousand strains of medical cannabis are available. PotBot helps patients figure out which one might work best for them by focusing on something inside the plant known as cannabinoids.
“Cannabinoids are the actual molecular structures in cannabis that give it its medicinal properties. It’s important to educate a patient when they’re looking for ailment relief on what those cannabinoids are so they can seek out plants that have higher levels of those molecules,” says Goldstein. “It will help them better understand what research has been done on the cannabinoids in cannabis in relation to their ailment, and then take it one step further and show what strain” might be most beneficial.
The PotBot app is set to launch in late October on web and mobile. The app will offer information about products available at dispensaries in the user’s area. Kiosks will soon be placed inside dispensaries to provide information about inventory at that location.
The initial launch of PotBot won’t include biometrics, but Goldstein says interested users can sign up now to get the app. Installation of PotBot kiosks at cannabis dispensaries will begin in December.
