A better way to answer our #1 question

You probably know that Emma's most frequently asked question is some variation of "What are your hours?" Until recently, she would respond by reading a summary of our hours. This is a rather long answer and it's not always correct, especially around the Holidays. When a user recently asked, "Are you open tomorrow?" on the day before a holiday, I began trying to program Emma to respond with the hours for a specific day. I contacted Dr. Wallace with some ideas and he put me on the right track. This is possible by using the formatted date tag. If you're unfamiliar with this formatting, or are interested in the technical details of the AIML code, follow this link.

Emma now knows what day it is and will respond with the hours for that day. She can also tell you if we're open tomorrow, or if we were open yesterday. I'm working on a separate AIML file containing holidays, so she'll know when we're closed or are closing early.

The #2 question is "Do you have eBooks?"

Happy Birthday, Emma!

Emma first appeared on our website two years ago on November 19, 2009. As we're constantly trying to improve her, it's easy to lose perspective on just how far she's come. Two years ago, Emma answered a dozen, canned questions from a drop down menu. Now she not only answers questions about the library, but she can also pass queries to our catalog, to the OhioLINK catalog, to the Ohio Web Library, to Wolfram|Alpha, and even get you a local weather forecast. She knows what day it is and can tell you the library's hours for that day. And believe it or not, these are just the first small steps.

Emma wasn't the first chatbot to be used by a library (there have been a handful of German bots since 2006) but she was the first one to go live to the public in the U.S. She's blazed a trail that others are now following - University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Akron-Summit County Public Library, and most recently the Wadsworth Public Library. As more libraries get involved, this technology will only improve, becoming more powerful and smarter.

So, what's in store for our humble Catbot? We already see her clones, "kittenbots," spreading to other libraries. Pandorabots is working to make her available to smart phones and other mobile devices, and to enable her to access information far beyond library catalogs and databases. Emma (and Siri) really are just the beginning!

My thanks to all of you who help Emma develop by chatting with her, and also to those of you who have believed in and supported this project. I've done my utmost to prove that your confidence has not been misplaced. I think the coming year will show that it has not.

Fall Cleaning

I've been putting it off for a while, but this was finally the weekend to start cleaning up Emma's brain. Kind of like raking the leaves or cleaning out the gutters; not the way you want to spend your days off, but you know it needs to be done. As you'd expect, Emma's brain developed through a number of stages. The oldest parts were generated more or less automatically by SitePal back in 2009. Not long after, I started learning how to write AIML myself. Being an ex-hornplayer and not a programmer, it took a while for me to learn good style, especially using AIML predicates. Not that the code was bad, it just needed some tidying up. And after three days and plenty of coffee it's nearly done. Now we'll have a nice, orderly foundation to build upon. And not just for Emma and MPL, but also for those using Emma's brain to make their own library bots.

Pandorabots Rock the 2011 Loebner Competition!

Exciting news from Alicebot.org
- Pandorabots made history at the 2011 Loebner Competition:


"For the first time in its history the Loebner Prize included a separate prize known as the Junior Loebner Prize in which the judging panel consisted of students between 12 and 14 years old. Our team's two entries, Zoe by Adeena Mignogna and Tutor by Ron C. Lee, tied for first place in the Junior contest. Zoe also came in second place in the main contest. Also this was the first time two finalists used the same platform, Pandorabots. Adeena, Ron, Steve Worswick, and Pandorabots engineering staff all worked together to make it a team effort.



The main contest was as usual judged by scientists, technology experts and journalists.  Typically the judges try to give the bots an IQ test with questions like, "How many syllables in the word banana?" or "Which is bigger a small mountain or a large tooth?" (not very good icebreakers in ordinary human conversation--can these judges carry on a conversation with a person?) and predictably once again the bots are pronounced "disappointing".   The junior judges have more fun with the bots, suspend their disbelief more easily, and engage in casual chat using internet slang, saying "LOL", "Wassup?" and "What did you have for breakfast?" instead of giving an IQ test.   It is as if the scientists are testing to see how much a human is like a computer, and the kids are testing to see how much the computer is like a human.



Bruce Wilcox, the winner of last year's Loebner Prize bronze medal once again took the award in the main contest this year.   No bot has yet been awarded the silver medal for passing the Turing Test."

Human-Chatbot Haptic interaction

Researchers from Disney Research and Carnegie Mellon University have been investigating haptic interfaces. Haptic interfaces allow a users to touch, feel, manipulate, create and/or alter simulated 3D objects in a virtual environment. Users can experience tactile sensations such as textures, friction and vibration. As many of you keep asking, you may be able to pet Emma in the not-too-distant future. Now if I could just get her to purr...

Say "Hi" to Pixel and Ella

Emma has some friends she'd like you to meet. They aren't cats, not even virtual cats, but they're both chatbots and they both work in libraries. The first is Pixel, created by Dee Ann Allison at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. Pixel is a very cool bot that answers questions about UNL library resources and services. You can chat with her here: http://pixel.unl.edu/.

Another chatbot friend is Ella, Wadsworth Public Library's perky new virtual librarian. You can chat with her here: http://www.wadsworthlibrary.com/bot/virtuallibrarian.cfm.

Please take some time and talk with both of these bots; just like Emma, every interaction helps make them smarter.

Midnight in Terminal 1

It's 1:30 am local time, that's 4:30 for everyone back in Ohio. Kris and I are stuck overnight in the San Francisco airport. All the flights heading back East were full this evening. After LITA, we thought it would be nice to relax for a few days in the Bay Area. I also wanted a few days off before starting to tackle the mountain of work that needs to be done on our bot. There are two goals for the next 3 months: 1. improve the way Emma guides searches, and 2. improve her ability to deal with random chat. I know what needs to be done to fix the former, that's the topic of a separate post. There are a number of files available from the free ALICE AIML set that should help with the latter, but they need testing and some customization first.

So what goes on in an airport after the last arrivals and departures? Not much. A few other folks with early morning flights are getting settled in for the night. There's a really cool zamboni-like vehicle cleaning the carpets. I'm seriously tempted to ask the driver if I can take it for a spin up the concourse. Looks like a lot of fun. Maybe not, though. It's cold in here, Kris estimates around 60 degrees. Plenty cold without adding wind chill and the carpet cleaner goes fast. SFO has free WiFi. Good thing, since sleeping might be tough. All the seats have arms, so one can sleep sitting up or stretch out on the floor. Sitting, thanks. With any luck we'll be home tomorrow, then it's back to work!