Category Archives: Artificial Life

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.

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.

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 .

eyePlorer : the knowledge machine

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Last update : August 9, 2013

eyePlorer by Vionto

eyePlorer by Vionto

eyePlorer is (or was) a graphical knowledge engine created by vionto®. Current search engines only present lists of links and documents, with eyePlorer however, you are able to locate relevant information and connections instantly. Facts and relationships between terms and concepts are visualised in an interactive application. The knowledge machines build by vionto® employ sophisticated semantic techniques in order to analyse the meaning of sentences and texts. The benefit for the user is that he or she can work with individual facts instead of just long documents.

The user does not work with documents but with knowledge and facts in a graphical, interactive, almost dialogue-like kind of way. Knowledge is visually arranged in different categories. vionto® knowledge machines are based on semantic analyses derived from cognitive science, brain research and computational linguistics. vionto® relies on a robust language technology platform and sophisticated linguistic resources such as, for example, ontologies and thesauri. Currently eyePlorer processes the English and German Wikipedia as well as MEDLINE/PubMed.

In the circular area on the left hand side eyePlorer presents eyeSpots – these represent terms that are related to a search topic. The exact nature of these connections can be displayed by pointing or clicking on an eyeSpot. A small window, the eyeTip, opens and displays facts that document the relation with one or more facts taken from our knowledge base. The circular area filled with eyeSpots that relate to a certain search term is called an eyeMap. To display connections between eyeSpots just double-click on an eyeSpot – lines will appear between the eyeSpot you clicked upon and eyeSpots that are semantically related. A click on one of these lines will display associated facts taken from the knowledge base.

EyeSpots are associated with various categories (people, countries, organizations, time, society, work, science & technology, …) visualized with different colors. The categorisation is a procedure that is carried out automatically. A double click on an empty area of a category expands it and shows only this category along with all its subcategories.

A dynamic link to eyePlorer can be added to a website to visualize search terms.

vionto® filed for U.S. patent registration of the eyePlorer technology. The eyePlorer visualizes knowledge graphs (k-graphs) derived from various contents that can be interactively explored.

vionto GmbH was founded in december 2008 in Berlin by Ralf von Grafenstein (Diplom-Kaufmann) and Dr. Martin C. Hirsch (neurobiologist and brain researcher). The first version of eyePlorer went online in February 2009 (see Frankfurter Allgemeine Feuilleton : Google-Herausforderer eyePlorer – Die Welt ist doch eine Scheibe) . Several prestigious prizes of the  internet sector have been awarded to vionto® (SUMA award, ECO Intenet award, Red Herring Europe Top 100 2009 Award, …)

However one year later was the end of the prestigious project with the inglorious death by bankruptcy of vionto GmbH (see SpeedX Blog : Verglüht). It was the same destiny as its ancestor semgine GmbH. The successor seems to be medx GmbH (diagnostic reasoning), the url eyeplorer.com is redirected to this site.

Dream Bank

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Last update : August 9, 2013

The Psychology Department of the University of California, Santa Cruz, offers access to their Dream Bank, a collection of over 20.000 dream reports in English and 6.000 dream reports in German, coming from a variety of different sources and research studies, from people ages 7 to 74.

The reports can be analyzed using a search engine and statistical programs built into the Dream Bank website. Several of the people who contributed dreams to the Dream Bank wrote prefaces to their journals which are also available. A summary of the collection available for search is presented in the grid.

D. William Domhoff wrote a contribution “Fast Content Analysis Using the Internet” in 2004 based on the search engine. More recent findings have been published in Consciousness and Cognition (17, 1238-1247) in 2008 in the contribution “Studying Dream Content Using the Archive and Search Engine on Dream Bank.net“.

Furbies : the domestically-aimed robots

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Last update : December 2, 2013

Furbies

A Furby is an electronic toy made by Tiger Electronics (subsidiary of Hasbro Inc.) which was first shown at the International Toy Fair in 1998. Created by Dave Hampton and Caleb Chung, the classical furby, which is 15 cm tall, originally retailed for about 35 $US. They were hard to find at the beginning and the growing demand for these toys drove the resale price as high as several hundred dollars in newspapers and in auctions. Nicknames were given to them, and sellers assigned rarity values to them. Furbies 1998 mainly had only 1 personality which is a calm and friendly furby. 24 Special Editions were produced, which range from all different genres of events.

Furbies 1998 can communicate with one another via a heart-shaped infrared port. Furbies start out speaking entirely Furbish, a language with short words, simple syllables, and various other sounds, but are programmed to speak less and less Furbish and more and more English as they “grow”. Simple electric motors and a system of gears close the Furby’s eyes and mouth, raise its ears, and lift it off the ground. The originals are still popular with many hackers as they can be dissected and made to do interesting things (see furby autopsy). In particular, their advanced audio capabilities and various sensory interfaces make them popular with the circuit bending community.

Furby Baby

In 1999, the Furby Babies were introduced, which are smaller than the original, have higher voices, and cannot dance. In the following years, novel furbys and furby friends were released, like Gizmo, Yoda, E.T. and Shelby. The third species of Furby, Emoto-Tronic, was released in August 2005. Larger than the previous version, the new Furbies have been upgraded with a more emotional face and a voice recognition system, enabling them to communicate with humans. One year later, emo-tronic furby babies and funky furbies have been introduced.

Furby 2012, also known as Furby 3.0, was the long awaited revival of the Furby series by Tiger. This serie was followed by Furby Party Rockers in February 2013 and by Furby BOOM in August 2013.

In 1999, McDonalds teamed up with Tiger Electronics to create McFurbys, their latest Happy Meal toy. These were small plastic Furbies in a variety of colours. Some featured limited sound effects and/or movement capabilities. There were a total of 80 to collect.

“Every furby deserves a home” is the motto of the Furby Adoption Center. Fun, chat, infos, artworks, photos, stories and overview of the furby generations are the content of this website.