Artificial Passenger - Voice Control Interface

Voice Control Interface

According to Dimitri Kanevsky, and IBM researcher, The Artificial Passenger was developed using the Conversational Interactivity for Telematics (CIT) speech system which counts on the drivers natural speech instead of the use of hands. The CIT relies on a Natural Language Understanding (NLU) system that is difficult to develop because of the low powered computer systems available inside cars . IBM suggests that this system be located on a server and accessed through the cars wireless technologies. IBM also says they are working on a “quasi-NLU” that uses fewer resources from the CPU and can be used inside the car. The CIT system includes another system called the Dialog Manager (DM). The DM takes the load of the NLU system by interacting with the vehicle, the driver, and external systems such as weather systems, email, telephones and more.

The NLU system receives a voice command from the driver and looks through a file system to come up with an action to be performed and executes that action . The DM works with question asked by the driver such as “How far is The Gallatin Field Airport from here?” The NLU system will still not be able to understand everything a driver says. Reasons for that are the different slangs and phrases used in different areas. IBM is working on developing a system that recognizes where the driver is and acknowledge the slangs and phrases used in that area.

Another system used within this technology is the Learning Transformation (LT) system which monitors the actions of the occupants of the car, and of the cars around it, learns patterns within the drivers speech and store that data, and learns from such data to try to improve the performance of the technology as a whole.