Author Archives: Marco Barnig

AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language)

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Last update : July 17, 2013

AIML virtual assistant

Virtual Assistant Denise by Guile 3D Studio

AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) is an XML-compliant language that’s easy to learn, and makes it possible to customize an artificial intelligence chat robot or creating one from scratch within minutes. AIML is free open-source software provided by the ALICE A.I. Foundation, a non-profit research and training organization. ALICE stands for Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity, an award-winning free natural language artificial intelligence chat robot. The AIML 2.0 draft specification was released on January 16, 2013.

A AIML beginners guide is available at the website of the ALICE  A.I. Foundation.

There are various AIML sets available, among them the free Annotated ALICE AIML set, a revised release of the scripts comprising the award winning chat robot ALICE. The ALICE A. I. Foundation is also offering the commercial version Superbot 2.1 (999 US$) that helps you to create a totally unique custom bot personality for your web site or application.

The other free softwares available are implementations of the ALICE chatbot engine in different computer languages, tools and knowledge bases. Documentation, specifications, tutorials and showcases are available at the alicebot.org website. Chatting with an original ALICEBOT is possible in the Hall of Fame of Digital Art at Leslie’s Artgallery.

Another more advanced implementation of an AIML robot is Denise, a virtual assistant software created by Guile 3D Studio.

An outstanding tool to program a robot brain in AIML is the free GaitoBot AIML editor provided by the german company Springwald Software.

LOVOTICS = Love + Robotics

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Last update : May 18, 2013

Lovotics

The Human and robot may fall in love one day!  That was the goal of Hooman Samani when he was an AI (Artficial Intelligence) researcher at the Keio-NUS CUTE Center, which is a collaborative Social Robots Lab between National University of Singapore and Keio University of Japan. In 2013, Dr. Hooman Samani is Director of the AIART Lab (Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Technology Laboratory) and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering, College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, National Taipei University, Taiwan. He is the founder of Lovotics research and developed several applications in the field of human-to-robot relationship.

Lovotics includes Artificial Endocrine System, Probabilistic Love Assembly and Affective State Transition modules. They are based on physiology of love, psychology of love and emotional models respectively. Artificial Endocrine System produces artificial hormones such as Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin and Endorphin, imitating the human endocrine system.

Affective State Transition controls various affective parameters of love, for example facial expressions, voice, gesture. They allow Lovotics robot to reason about other person’s emotions and state of mind.

Lovotics is a multidisciplinary research field utilizing fundamentals concepts from robotics, artificial intelligence, philosophy, psychology, biology, anthropology, neuroscience, social science, computer science and engineering. Kissenger, Mini-Surrogate and XOXO are applications of Lovotics.

Verbots

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Last update : August 6, 2013

Verbot 5

Verbots (Verbally Enchanted Software Robots)  is a popular chatterbot program and Artificial Intelligence Software Development Kit (SDK) for the Windows platform and for the web, created by Dr. Michael Mauldin and Peter Plantec.

Some milestones of the history of verbots are presented hereafter :

  • 1989 : TinyMUD Gloria
  • 1990 : TinyMUD Julia
  • 1991 : participation of Julia in the first Loebner Prize contest
  • 1994 : chatterbot Julia
  • 1997 : creation of Virtual Personalities, Inc.
  • 2000 : production release of the virtual human interface Sylvie
  • 2004 : release of the Verbot 4 version
  • 2006 : start of Verbots Online
  • 2010 : relase of the Verbot 5 version

Version 4 of verbots was based on MS Agent which has been discontinued by Microsoft in Windows 7.  A properties viewer of MS agents has been created by AbhiSoft Technologies. A related scripting software has been developed by the same company who also provides a file repository for MS Agents.

Version 5 of verbots uses characters made up of 22 SAPI5 viseme groups and animations. The Conversive Character Studio Application allows you to easily create your own talking characters that are compatible with Verbots and VerbotsOnline using high-quality SAPI 5 tts voices. Conversive characters are defined in a .css file in xml format. Sample visemes are available at the verbots wiki website. Animations are a collection of frames which are displayed on the screen in sequence.

The different verbots file types are :

  • ckb : Compiled KnowledgeBase
  • csv : Comma Separated Values
  • vkb : Verbot KnowledgeBase
  • vrp : Verbot Replacement Profile
  • vsn : Verbot Synonyms

The templates to create the Verbots brain are the following :

  • My answers
  • My Knowledge Bases
  • My Design
  • Install

In the Online version you can browse the chat logs, manage your account and list your bot in the online directory. Several tags are available to commande the Verbot. A Verbot editor allows to create and edit the different templates. KnowledgeBases are created from a collection of Rules. Rules contain Inputs and Outputs. Rules can be Primary Rules, Child Rules or Virtual Child Rules. Conditionals, variables and regular expressions are further means to set up a personality. Special inputs allow to start and stop animations, embedded C# code modules allows to execute programs, schedue tags allow to trigger time events, commands are used to open web adresses or to run applications.

The Teaching.vkb KnowledgeBase allows new rules to be dynamically added while chatting.

ChatVerbots for IRC and AIM are available as beta versions.

The following tutorials about Verbots are available :

  • Creating personalities
  • Creating your first rule
  • Creating child rules
  • Knowledge Base templates and csv files

Communities discussing about verbots are listed below :

Concerning  AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language maintained by the Alice Foundation ), verbots don’t comply to this standard. Verbots KB (Knowledge Base) and AIML both are XML based, but the format is different, the working of engine is different, the usability is different.

A free tool to convert AIML files to Verbots KB files is available at the Verbots website.

The Alice Foundation is more active, more dynamic and more professional, compared to the Verbots Community, whereas the Verbots Technology offers some outstanding features.

The Verbots Online Service was closing down at the end of August 2012. Free webhosting for AIML is still available  : Pandorabots for AIML. To fully customize your Bot and to give him a Voice (TTS), a paid subscription is required. SitePal.

Microsoft Tellme

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Microsoft Tellme simplifies everyday tasks with the natural power of your voice. You can talk to your PC, tablet, phone, TV or car.

The results of the Microsoft Tellme technologies “Say it. Get it” are speech recognition and synthesis capabilities in products ranging from Xbox Kinect for fun to Microsoft Tellme IVR for customer care to Windows Phone 7 for life and work.

In Windows 7 you can use voice recognition to control your computer and to dictate and edit text. A guide how to set up your computer for this task is available at the microsoft website.

The provided technologies for business applications are Microsoft Tellme IVR and embedded speach features in Office, Lync and Exchange . Different platforms are available : cloud, server, desktop, phone.

To extend the built-in speech recognition functionality included in Windows on desktop, you can use Windows Speech Recognition Macros or, for more advanced uses, the Microsoft Speech API (SAPI).

SAPI has been an integral component of all Microsoft Windows versions since Windows 98. Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 include SAPI version 5.1. Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 include SAPI version 5.3, while Windows 7 includes SAPI version 5.4. Code written for SAPI 5.3 (Vista) will run on SAPI 5.4 (Windows 7) without recompiling.

People researching on Artificial Consciousness

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Based mainly on the outstanding informations at the website www.Conscious-Robots.com, an updated list of people researching in the field of machine consciousness is shown below :

  • Dr. Raúl Arrabales Moreno : Assistant Professor, Computer Science Department, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
  • Dr. Igor Aleksander : Emeritus Professor of Neural Systems Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College London, UK; Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering
  • Dr Will Browne : Senior Lecturer, School of Engineering and Computer Science, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
  • Dr. Antonio Chella : Head of RoboticsLab, Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica (DINFO), Università di Palermo, Italy
  • Dr. Ron Chrisley : Reader in Philosophy, Director, Center for Research in Cognitive Science, University of Sussex, UK
  • Dr. Axel Cleeremans : Research Director, National Fund for Scientific Research, Member of the Royal Academy of Belgium, Consciousness, Cognition & Computation Group, Université Libre de Bruxelles CP 191, Belgium
  • Dr. Stan Franklin : W. Harry Feinstone Interdisciplinary Research Professor, Cognitive Computing Research Group
    Department of Computer Science, Institute for Intelligent Systems, The University of Memphis, USA
  • Dr. David Gamez : Research Associate, Department of Computing, Imperial College, London, UK
  • Dr. Ben Goertzel : Cross-disciplinary scientist, engineer, entrepreneur, manager, writer, speaker; CTO, Genescient Corp, Irvine CA, USA; CEO and Chief Scientist, Novamente LLC, Rockville MD, USA; CEO and Chief Scientist, Biomind LLC, Rockville MD, USA
  • Steve Grand : Director, Cyberlife Research Ltd., Somerset, UK
  • Dr. Pentti O A Haikonen : Adjunct Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Illinois at Springfield, USA
  • Owen Holland : Professor of cognitive robotics (Informatics) in the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex, UK
  • Dr. Ray Kurzweil : entreprenuer, leading inventor, author, restless genius, ultimate thinking machine; he has received nineteen honorary Doctorates and honors from three U.S. presidents; in 2002 he was inducted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame in USA
  • Dr. Riccardo Manzotti : Assistant Professor in Psychology, IULM University, Milan, Italy
  • Dr. Hugo Gravato Marques : Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Department of Informatics, University of Zurich, Switzerland
  • Dr. Michael Loren Mauldin (alias Fuzzy) :  Founder and chief scientist of Lycos ; Director of Conversive, Inc.
  • Peter Plantec : Clinical psychologist, animator, virtual human designer ; author of the book Virtual Humans; founder of Virtual Personalities, Inc. (now Conversive, Inc.) in order to create the first virtual human interface Vperson (now Verbots)
  • Dr. Uma Ramamurthy : Asst. Professor & Director of Research Informatics, Dan L. Duncan Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, USA
  • Dr. Ricardo Sanz : Professor in Systems Engineering and Automatic Control and coordinator of the Autonomous Systems Laboratory research group at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in Madrid, Spain
  • Dr. Anil Seth : Co-Director, Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science (SCCS), University of Sussex; Reader, School of Informatics, University of Sussex; EPSRC Leadership Fellow; Visiting Professor, Dept of Psychology, University of Amsterdam
  • Dr. Murray Patrick Shanahan : Professor of Cognitive Robotics, Department of Computing, Computational Neurodynamics Group, Imperial College London, UK
  • Dr. Aaron Sloman : School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, UK

Virtual Assistant Denise by Guile3D

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Last update : May 30, 2014

Virtual Assistant Denise

Guile 3D Denise

Guile 3D Studio, a company founded in 2001 by System Analyst, Artificial Intelligence Specialist and 3D Graphic Artist Guile Lindroth, created the advanced Virtual Assistant Denise. She comes with a real-time proprietary graphic engine, a high quality English Text to speech voice and a Voice Recognition engine. Denise works with an adaptive Artificial Intelligence Brain, based on AIML, that can learn by itself and be customized by user.

Denise was the winner of the Chatterbox Challenge 2011 in the category Best New Bot. In 2014 Denise was the winner of the 1st place in the Chatterbox Challenge..

In september 2011, Guile 3D teamed up with NeuroSky for a brainwave impulse control interface. The NeuroSky MindWave headset is the first product available for the consumer market. As a turnkey brainwave sensing headset, it uses the same bio-sensor as the Mattel MindFlex, Star Wars Force Trainer and NeuroSky’s research tool the MindSet. It measures brainwave impulses from the forehead from a position neuroscientists call FP1 with research grade precision.

In the same month, Guile 3D teamed up with EMOTIV for computer-brain control interface. Based on the latest developments in neuro-technology, Emotiv has developed a revolutionary new personal interface for human computer interaction.

In 2013 an Avatar Builder SDK was announced which was however never released up to now. In January 2014, Guile 3D Studio became NextOS. The company will now focus in the Home Automation area as well improve the Virtual Assistant Technology. In April 2014 NextOS stopped for a while the work on the desktop version Denise 2.0 to get the Home Automation and the mobile modules ready. Late May 2014, NextOS started an Alpha testing phase for Virtual Denise Mobile on iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8 platforms. For this purpose NextOS uses both TestFlight, a free platform to distribute beta and internal iOS applications to team members and .

CSS Mediaqueries

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Last update : June 26, 2014

The CSS3 module that defines mediaqueries reached the W3C Recommendation status in June 2012 and offers introspection into the browsing environment based on the following factors:

  • browser dimensions (width, height and aspect-ratio)
  • device dimensions (device-width, device-height and device-aspect-ratio)
  • browser orientation
  • colour information (color, color-index and monochrome)
  • device-specific details such as its resolution, whether its display is grid or bitmap-based, and the scan type (progressive or interlaced … applicable to televisions)

Not all of these properties are currently supported, but many are. Additionally, most of them support min and max prefixes like the one used below, enabling you to tailor your queries very specifically.

@media screen and (max-width:480px) {
background-color:red;
font-size:1.5em;
}

This set of styles is only applied to a screen which is 480 pixels wide or less.

A mediaquery test capabilities, not individual devices or browsers, so it’s future proof. There is no redirection to a different page, it’s one page for all. The mediaquery is tested before any assets are downloaded, saving bandwith and speeding up the display.

Some useful tutorials about mediaqueries are listed hereafter :

HTML5 Structure : Semantic Webdesign

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Last update : August 30, 2012

HTML5 is work in progress and is going to stay that way for some time, but that’s no reason not to start using it right now. HTML5 added some very important new, semantic elements. To care for older browsers, use graceful degradation techniques. To be up to date with the latest trends, use progressive enhancement technologies.

HTML5 is not based on SGML, and therefore does not require a reference to a DTD.

The website When can I use provides compatibility tables for support of HTML5, CSS3, SVG and more in desktop and mobile browsers.

The following list provide links to some useful blogs and tutorials about HTML5 :

The following list provide links to some useful HTML5 tools :

 

airbnb : a community marketplace for unique spaces

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airbnb website

Airbnb connects people who have space to spare with those who are looking for a place to stay. Guests can build real connections with their hosts, gain access to distinctive spaces, and immerse themselves in the culture of their destinations. Whether it’s an urban apartment or countryside castle, Airbnb makes it effortless to showcase your space to an audience of millions, and to find the right space at any price point, anywhere.

The following topics are published ont the Airbnb website: about, news, blog, golden rules, testimonials, press, safety, founding team, contact, help, affiliates.

Fiddler : Web Debugging Proxy

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Last update : May 22, 2015

Building web applications is hard work and most people remain unaware of how their web application is interacting with the web browsers that their clients have installed. Fiddler,  a free web debugging proxy created by Eric Lawrence, helps to simplify the analysis process substantially by logging all HTTP(S) traffic between your computer and the Internet. Fiddler is a transparent proxy that automatically adds itself to the WININET chain so that it can see every request being made. It logs those requests and the responses to allow you to see what is working and what isn’t working.

Fiddler allows you to inspect all HTTP(S) traffic, set breakpoints, and “fiddle” with incoming or outgoing data. Fiddler includes a powerful event-based scripting subsystem, and can be extended using any .NET language. Fiddler is freeware and can debug traffic from virtually any application, including Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and thousands more.

The developper, Eric Lawrence, was Security Program Manager at Microsoft for Internet Explorer. After over a decade of working on the web for Microsoft, Eric joined Telerik in October 2012 to enhance the Fiddler Web Debugger on a full-time basis. Telerik is devoted to making software development easier and more fun and has committed to keeping Fiddler free and expanding its value by further investing into the tool.

A quick summary of getting started with Fiddler has been published at Developer.com. A detailed documentation is available at the Fiddler website. A discussion forum and a developer section are available at the same site. Various addons and third-party extensions have been developped.

Fiddler can be configured to analyse the http traffic of iPad’s, iPhone’s and other web devices.

A simular tool called Charles is available for Mac Computers.

Some related tutorials about Fiddler and HTTP debugging are listed hereafter :