[Rookie]

Hello there everyone 

This is my first time posting here. I am a student of computer science taking the course of AI for the first time. I have become quite interested in the subject and want to base my final project on some hot topic related to AI but since i have only took a few lectures my knowledge of the subject is quite limited, so i was wondering if anyone here could just point me in the right direction by giving me some feasible ideas that can be implemented in about 5-7 months.

I have come up with a really crude idea of making a chat-bot that would use the concepts form theory of automata to generate replies from a set of strings using some specific algorithm...,yes i know its quite non descriptive but my knowledge of both the subjects(TOA and AI) is quite limited, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Waiting for a quick response 

[Freddy]

Hi Rookie, welcome to AiDreams 

Let me ask a few questions and in so doing hopefully it will help others answer you.

What platform are you thinking of working on ? Desktop, mobile devices using something like Android or iOS, Windows and so on...?

What language ? Visual Basic, C#, PHP, Java...?

What end result ? You said a chatbot, but are you thinking something more ?

Do you want to program the whole thing yourself from scratch or do you want to build on existing technology and code ?

P.S. I enlarged your font size to make things more readable.

[Bragi]

Some hot topics at the moment:
-BIG DATA (put this in a proposal and you're almost guaranteed to get a reaction)
-internet of things
Most presentations/meetings/.... these days tend be about these 2 subjects, preferably combined 

[Rookie]

Hi Rookie, welcome to AiDreams 

Let me ask a few questions and in so doing hopefully it will help others answer you.

What platform are you thinking of working on ? Desktop, mobile devices using something like Android or iOS, Windows and so on...?

What language ? Visual Basic, C#, PHP, Java...?

What end result ? You said a chatbot, but are you thinking something more ?

Do you want to program the whole thing yourself from scratch or do you want to build on existing technology and code ?

P.S. I enlarged your font size to make things more readable.

Thanks for the reply man and sorry for the late response i have been caught in the mids lately.

I am thinking of making something that can actually serve a meaningful purpose.If i can build something like an on the go android mobile app that would be great and i will be taking android classes in the next semester as well.

It really doesn't matter if i have to built it from the scratch but that doesn't mean i don't want to work on an existing technology.The end result just has to be meaningful and  practical. As far as chat bots are concerned i have looked into them further but they don't seems like they are of any practical use(that is my humble opinion of course).

i have learned both c# and java but like i said above the idea of a mobile app seems much more appealing to me.

[Freddy]

Ok, your Java knowledge would make Android an easier target too then.

Maybe you should take a look at mobile assistants. CallMom is a good example :

http://callmom.pandorabots.com/static/callmombasic/

You could still have chat capability by using the Pandorabots' API and then build an assistant around it.

Check out Eclipse for Android development :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclipse_(software)

[Freddy]

More here : http://www.vogella.com/articles/Android/article.html - very new that one, you would have to decide which version of Android you want to target. Android 2.2 was the most widely used when I last looked it up, but that has probably changed now.

And another useful page for the ADT...

Android offers a custom plugin for the Eclipse IDE, called Android Development Tools (ADT). This plugin provides a powerful, integrated environment in which to develop Android apps. It extends the capabilities of Eclipse to let you quickly set up new Android projects, build an app UI, debug your app, and export signed (or unsigned) app packages (APKs) for distribution.

http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/installing-adt.html

[Rookie]

Ok, your Java knowledge would make Android an easier target too then.

Maybe you should take a look at mobile assistants. CallMom is a good example :

http://callmom.pandorabots.com/static/callmombasic/

You could still have chat capability by using the Pandorabots' API and then build an assistant around it.

Check out Eclipse for Android development :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclipse_(software)

Thanks Freddy, i think making a mobile assistant would be a great idea. I have come up with an idea of making an information based mobile assistant and this is my plan

I am looking to make a mobile assistant using android that would that would be powered by wolfram alpha website

http://www.wolframalpha.com/

The assistant would take input from the user via speech and translate it to text which would be passed to wolfram as keywords. It would be the responsibility of the assistant to display only the answer to the user meaning that the background working would be hidden from the user.

User can maintain records(databases) for the results he gets from his queries. For example the records for how the weather has been for the past week, these records can only be updated via the internet but can be viewed offline after updating. The application provides the user to categorize different type of records with different names. User can use data from one or more of these records to extract some meaningful information. For example user can ask to compare USA with CHINA if the user already has recorded information of both countries the assistant can oblige the request to the extent of the available information.

I just want help for following questions

(1)Are there any API's available in android to maintain an offline data base that can fetch data(on command) from a specified source(wolfram in this case)?

(2)What is the best way to maintain a server for such an app?

Thanks in advance.

[Freddy]

My toying with Android was simply getting a chatbot to work with Pandorabots, which in itself is pretty trivial. I was going to make an Android assistant (still may some day) but then CallMom came out so I went over to that for a while and ditched my assistant.

Wolfram alpha looks good, I had heard of it before, but have not used it myself.

I suggest you find some expertise for both those questions. Try over on Stack Overflow, there is bound to be someone of more experience in this area than me. They can be a bit strict over there, so make sure your question is clear and to the point and with relevant information so that they can make an informed reply. I found that site useful a few times when I get stuck, you just have to put up with the know-it-alls...

http://stackoverflow.com/

With Q1 you might end up having to code that yourself in PHP and MySQL for example. So you would interact with wolfram using the wolfram API to get a response. Then decide what you are going to do with the data.

Ultimately you could return the responses from your server using something like XML perhaps and that would be sent to your Android app.

Your choice of having something between the mobile app and all the services is wise I think. That saves a lot of work for the mobile device and most servers can do their jobs pretty fast with things like this compared to a lot of mobile devices still.

I think  you would need to flesh things out some more before coming to understand how your server-side code should be maintained. Have you used PHPMyAdmin before ? Back end tasks would probably involve searches for data, deleting data and refreshing data. But like I said, more info needed..

[Art]

Actually for perhaps some more "down-to-earth" people, some of which are quite knowledgeable, try www.chatbots.org. As Freddy mentioned, and is always good advice, Think through your questions first before you post them, making sure they (your questions) relay exactly what you wish to know.
Sometimes, sites like these have lots of people from a variety of places where English is not their primary language. Often times, certain thoughts are not always implied and simply lost in translation.
Above all, Keep It Simple.

Best of luck!!

[Freddy]

Good suggestion Art