AnHitz, Basque scientific expert... virtual

2008/11/22 Galarraga Aiestaran, Ana - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Adimen artifiziala
• Internet
• Softwarea
• Programazioa

This scientific expert, called AnHitz, was presented, in addition to these two scientific tents, at the conference on speech technologies held last week in Bilbao. AnHitz is a virtual person, looking like a woman, able to answer questions about science or technology in Basque.

AnHitz is very cozy and first gets in touch with the user. He asks his name and knows his voice. It then allows you to ask a specific question or search for information through keywords. When the user tells you what he wants, AnHitz searches for information in various science and technology databases on the Internet. As soon as the answer is found, it communicates verbally.

In addition, it shows in writing the text of the answer. And also read the title of these texts, if so requested, in Basque or in the original language. In fact, it seeks information in three languages: Basque, Spanish and English. Later, he teaches those of Basque as it is, those of Spanish translate to Basque and those of English give them in the original language. In addition, by clicking on the title of the texts, it redirects the user to its original website.

To achieve this it is necessary to combine several technologies. Thus, in Euskal Herria five agents have collaborated: The R&D unit of the Elhuyar Foundation, the Ixa and Aholkularitza groups of the UPV/EHU, and the VICOMTech and Robotiker technology centers.

Each one his own and all together

The five started working in 2006 with the aim of developing the linguistic technologies necessary for communication between people and devices and managing knowledge naturally. To achieve this overall goal, each agent has worked in different aspects.

For example, the female virtual character that appears on screen has been developed by VICOMTech. It should be noted that it is three-dimensional and can express emotions. The similarity of the real person facilitates communication and, at least in the scientific tent of San Sebastian, the members of the stand of the Elhuyar Foundation had the opportunity to demonstrate it: more than one visitor asked Elhuyar if it was what was on screen. That is to say, AnHitz did not look like robots, but people of flesh and bone.

The research group of UPV-EHU Aholkularitza and the research centre Robotiker-Tecnalia have trained in the knowledge and synthesis of voice. Thanks to this, AnHitz is able to pronounce dialects and words with various variants, and he speaks in Basque batua. On the other hand, the answer system to questions and the ability to translate documents on the Internet automatically to the Basque language is due to the IXA group of the UPV. Finally, the ability to search for multilingual documents is the result of the work done by the Elhuyar Foundation R&D group.

AnHitz is not fully finished, it is a prototype. For the moment, he is only an expert in science and technology and does not answer all kinds of questions: who, who, when and where best answers questions with pollsters. But the agents intend to continue to improve the technology behind AnHitz, and thus it is possible that they will soon be able to extract information from other fields, such as searching in other databases, – as well as answering other questions. Who knows if one day we will meet AnHitz at an airport, museum or shop!

Published in Gara