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:
Plans for future developments include:
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More detailed answers using the True Knowledge references, with optional voice activated reference following.
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Voice input initially via an Android phone.
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Lots more animations to get Nao moving while he deals with your questions.
If you are a member of the Nao Developer Program you can find all the code on the developer's website. For more information about True Knowledge check their website (there's a link for developers in the footer). More information on Nao and the Nao Developer Program can be found at Aldebaran's website.