Computing in Northamptonshire: chatbot

Showing posts with label chatbot. Show all posts

Saturday, 16 December 2017

Meet the dancing robot (or let them introduce themselves)

The video below was taken during a final year module of Artificial Intelligence Techniques by one of the students, Devan Gokani. The session looked at social robotics and chatbots. As well as the robots, the students also played with the multi-award winning Mitsuku chatbot http://www.square-bear.co.uk/mitsuku/chat.htm

The robot show below is an Aldebaran NAO robot.

All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon

Friday, 26 February 2016

Teaching with NAO- social AI

NAO robots were used, in my teaching at least, to teach social AI for the first time this week. The session revolved around the using social cues and, to certain extent, using natural language through chatbots for us to communicate with machines.

The robots were used as an example of a social robot, and the way we want to play with or work with them without having to going through a steep learning curve on to use them. Students were encouraged to consider why this was and that anthropomorphisation plays a part (NAO basically has some of the characteristics of a small child). The fact that it responds to voice commands, its looks, has a childlike voice, that it always moving (even slightly including when it is standing) and the way it moves; were spotted by the group as ways it attracts us to it - it is really hard not to talk to it like a child sometimes (perhaps that is just me).

This activity was also included with the use of chatbots (one example used is shown above) and AIML, Artificial Intelligence Markup Language, (a link to more AIML is included below). The chatbots were used to show how we can create intelligent-like behave by in effect providing responses to questions. Followed by, how we then take this further by using the responses people give, while using the chatbot, to 'fine-tune' the model.

To read more about NAO robots go to https://www.aldebaran.com/en

To read more on AIML go to http://www.alicebot.org/aiml.html

Example chatbots

ALICE http://alice.pandorabots.com/ (the one shown in the picture above).
Mitsuku http://www.mitsuku.com/
An example of an MSc student's work on Chatbots http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/msc-student-work-chatbot-innovative.html

All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with

Monday, 4 November 2013

MSc Computing Projects 2013

A sample of the MSc Computing projects completed in 2013 at the School of Science and Technology, University of Northampton.

Investigation and Development of a Networking and Cyber Security Lab

Fungai P. Mundoma

For more details go to : http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/msc-student-work-investigation-and.html

MOBILE NETWORK SYSTEM FOR DISASTER MANAGEMENT

OLATUNDE AYANLEYE

For more details go to : http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/msc-student-work-mobile-network-system.html

Chatbot: an innovative approach towards learning and teaching process in today’s education system.

Poonam Bhatia

For more details go to: http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/msc-student-work-chatbot-innovative.html

Cloud Computing Infrastructure
Hang Xu

For more details go to: http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/msc-work-implementation-of-openstack.html

Interactive TV applied to internet broadcast media

James Smith

For more information go to: http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/msc-dissertation-interactive-tv.html

The University of Northampton's, Department of Computing and Immersive Technologies offers five courses within the MSc Computing postgraduate provision (shown below) all available either part-time or full-time.

Monday, 21 October 2013

Chatbot: an innovative learning and teaching.

Chatbot: an innovative approach towards learning and teaching process in today’s education system.

Poonam Bhatia

Abstract
Artificial intelligence has been appreciated for bringing the ease to human’s life in the form of intelligent agents. These are software that can that can perform task on behalf of users that can range from solving problems to learning new things to making recommendations in various situations. One particular type of agent known as chatbot, offers an attractive ways to communicate with humans behaving as if it understands the human language. Chat bots have been widely used in many industries like entertainment, health, banking to help users but its potential has not been fully utilised in education sector where they can be used as a leaning model by students during their academic year. The task of examining the hypothesis ‘Chat bot can be an innovative approach towards learning and teaching process in today’s education system’ is the main purpose of this dissertation.

As an initiation point, sufficient amount of literature sources were researched to understand the application areas of chat bots along with their effects. The overall efficiency of a chat bot as a mentor was tested through the development of a prototype system. For system evaluation, the framework of the system was based on JAVA concepts where system acts as a JAVA tutor with a view to teach JAVA concepts to students.

The system was tested by using a sample of potential computing students of University of Northampton and the feedback was extracted from the questionnaire that distributed to the participants. It then helped to know user’s point of view on having chat bots as a tool for learning their courses.
This investigation thus, helped in understanding the potential of chat bots as tutors in colleges and universities. They give a new direction to the existing learning and teaching process by its automating various tasks and providing availability 24X7 for guidance which is not possible in today’s pedagogical system.