Nao Knowledge - Nao interfaces with True Knowledge

With the interest that has been generated by natural language queries in such products as SIRI, on the iPhone, and Speak to It Assistant, on Android, I have become intrigued with the idea of integrating a natural language capability into my Nao robot. A sort of quick question and answer service provided by my robot buddy.

After some initial investigation, I decided to start by using the True Knowledge Natural Language Query engine. True Knowledge have a developer program that gives you access to the API and up to 2000 queries per day. This seemed ideal for the initial work so I signed up.

The True Knowledge API is very straight forward to use. Simply call the documented URL with the correct details, primarily your user name, api key and question. True Knowledge returns an XML based response detailing the answer and other references where available.

Using Choregraphe to create the behaviour, and Python to script the call to True Knowledge, along with extracting the answer data from the response, an effective proof of concept was built. The proof of concept uses a Nao widget to pass the question to the robot over XMPP. A video of this is below:

The NAO Developer Program still has places.

As most of you know, I am involved with working on the Nao Robot, through the Nao Developer Program. It's what most of my blog is about. Well, Aldebaran Robotics still have opening on their developer program. If you want to be involved in the development of the Nao Robot there are still opportunities. It's a great community to work with and is supported actively by Aldebaran, as well as having input from a lot of developers from all over the world. You get to play with some of the most advanced robotics equipment available, and meet a great bunch of people. Have a look at the promo video: