[kkeaney]

Hello,
We travel to elementary schools with the only interactive robotic show in Canada. (www.robocation.ca) We have several robots that perform various  tasks.  We have one robot that we would like to add more intelligence to.  It runs on windows XP and travels around avoiding objects.  Not too exciting
We need some advice on implementing a voice recognition that kids can ask, talk and receive answers to their queries.  Also be able to learn based on the responses.  I have used the free Answerpad but as many of you probably know it is far from great.
Can anyone offer recommendations for this project?   The only other option is to have Le Trung - the guy that built and programmed  "Aiko" www.projectaiko.com hard code responses to questions.

Looking forward to any ideas or direction.

Karol

[Maviarab]

Welcome to the site kkeaney.

Not really sure on the best application to be honest, can think of many but howto integrate would be another matter.

My first choice on voice recognition would be with Dragon, but again, not sure how you would integrate it all.

Sure others with more experience in this field will be along soon to help you.

[wgb14]

In terms of natural language processing I would go with one the following four solutions:

1) Suzette : check my discussions with Bruce). His ssoftware is amazing but I am not sure if he will offer any kind of API any time soon

2) Virtual Human Factory: academic work, less advance than Bruce's Suzette, but offers an Interface to develop your own conversations and an API to integrate the engine in your own applications, no learning abilities but their pattern matching is the second best I have seen (first is Suzette). Website http://verg.cise.ufl.edu/VirtualPeopleFactory.

3) Personalityforge (strong pattern matching but no API there so I guess no much of a use)

4) ALICE and Pandorabox several API available and several versions of the engine.

In term of voice Microsoft ASR 6.1 (that comes only with XP tablet edition and office 2003) along with chant API is the best combination you can have. Of course you can always try the MS ASR engine that comes with windows Vista (much better than 6.1 but if you have developed your existing software in XP you will probably have compatibility problems)