Next-generation of virtual personal assistants (Microsoft Cortana, Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa and Google Home)

TLDR

Artificial intelligence seeks natural dialogue, and conversational systems have become the fastest growing AI subfield. This work proposes a next‑generation virtual personal assistant that leverages multimodal dialogue to enhance human‑machine interaction. The assistant integrates speech, image/video, gesture, and gaze inputs with extensive dialogue and general knowledge bases to enable multimodal interaction. The resulting system can be applied to education, healthcare, robotics, automotive, accessibility, home automation, and security.

Abstract

One of the goals of Artificial intelligence (AI) is the realization of natural dialogue between humans and machines. in recent years, the dialogue systems, also known as interactive conversational systems are the fastest growing area in AI. Many companies have used the dialogue systems technology to establish various kinds of Virtual Personal Assistants(VPAs) based on their applications and areas, such as Microsoft's Cortana, Apple's Siri, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Facebook's M. However, in this proposal, we have used the multi-modal dialogue systems which process two or more combined user input modes, such as speech, image, video, touch, manual gestures, gaze, and head and body movement in order to design the Next-Generation of VPAs model. The new model of VPAs will be used to increase the interaction between humans and the machines by using different technologies, such as gesture recognition, image/video recognition, speech recognition, the vast dialogue and conversational knowledge base, and the general knowledge base. Moreover, the new VPAs system can be used in other different areas of applications, including education assistance, medical assistance, robotics and vehicles, disabilities systems, home automation, and security access control.