Executive Assist
Project Context
Executives handle a wide range of daily tasks, including meeting management, scheduling, and strategy. When a CEO is required to manually track requests across multiple digital and verbal channels, it delays the entire decision-making process. This forces leaders to spend time on simple, repetitive tasks rather than prioritizing their core strategic work.
To address this, we developed a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) for a voice-activated Executive Assist device. The project validates the use of local AI to automate routine scheduling and informational tasks.
The PoC centers on a standalone Edge AI architecture featuring an interactive display and a local Large Language Model (LLM) integration. By processing data on-device, the system ensures high responsiveness and data security.
The device demonstrates the following capabilities:
- Complex, context-aware task execution, such as integrating with calendars and email systems to handle requests like, “Schedule a meeting for 12th January with Paul Müller at available time.”
- Real-time connectivity for external data retrieval (e.g., “What’s the weather going to be like tomorrow in Glasgow?”).
- Integration with IoT protocols to provide smart office environment control (e.g., adjusting room temperature and lighting).
This architecture was designed to prove the device’s ability to act as a complete, intelligent executive interface.
Hardware Stack
Firmware Stack
Solution Overview
We developed Executive Assist, an AI-driven personal assistant system, as a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) to address administrative and scheduling constraints common in executive workflows. The system enables users to issue voice-activated requests for tasks including meeting coordination, travel booking, and secure document retrieval.
The primary engineering objective was to achieve real-time command execution at the edge. For this PoC, we architected the device on the Nvidia Jetson Nano platform to utilize its GPU for local inference. Running the Large Language Model (LLM) and speech-processing models on-device is a deliberate design choice to maintain the security of confidential company data. This Edge AI architecture provides the necessary latency reductions and data privacy by eliminating the requirement for constant cloud connectivity.
What functionalities Executive Assist delivers?
- Workflow Automation: This was achieved by integrating the LLM with a custom API layer designed to parse multi-variable requests. The system manages scheduling by autonomously analyzing calendar data, identifying mutual availability, and executing structured commands. This replaces manual coordination for high-frequency administrative tasks
- Smart Office Integration: The system utilizes embedded communication protocols (Wi-Fi and BLE) to serve as a hardware control hub. The CEO can issue voice commands to manage the immediate office environment – specifically temperature, lighting, and window blinds – providing a centralized, hands-free interface for environmental control.
What We Achieved
During the PoC phase, we successfully validated the system architecture and its ability to handle all defined test scenarios. The device demonstrated consistently low-latency responses across all available functions, confirming that the NVIDIA Jetson Nano provides sufficient performance for Edge AI processing at this stage. In later phases, we will evaluate more cost-optimized processing platforms.
The PoC also validated response accuracy, demonstrating that the device can reliably execute complex, multi-variable voice requests, such as meeting scheduling and data retrieval.
Finally, we successfully integrated the device with IoT protocols, enabling environmental control and demonstrated compatibility with smart environment management use cases.
Project Duration Estimate
