The goal of the Virtual Assistant project is to build an automated assistant that is natural and intuitive to use, and that can be an alternative to a personal human assistant. One of our primary goals in developing this assistant will be to create a natural, easy to use interface that is available when and where a user needs it. To do this we will build and incorporate technologies to enable intelligent and sophisticated voice-based and multimodal interaction on a variety of mobile devices.
Function includes setting up meetings, making phone calls, taking messages, etc.
Data includes message content such as email, voice mail, fax, and personal information such as calendaring, address book, and to-dos. An important component resulting from the messaging requirements is a Universal Message Store, a single repository for all communications. In parallel to this component is an interface that allows for a single mode of interaction with the message whether it is voice mail, e-mail or fax. Recognized speech is processed using natural language understanding which allows a user to speak arbitrary phrases within the domain. We currently support a working prototype with about fifty users.