virtual personal assistant

Virtual Personal Assistant (VPA)

Personal Assistants

People hired Personal Assistants

What is Personal Assistant? A secretary working exclusive for one particular Person.

They keep all the information about their boss like: When he wake up?

When he is going to sleep?

When he attending a meeting?

All about his/her calendar times.

etc.

Trying to Make a Good Assistant

Different companies try to make Personal Assistants in the form of application as the computer was making rapidly progress.

The Application, which almost meets all the needs of their boss.

They made some applications.

But they were not so sufficient because they were just for specific purpose.

Competition

As there is a lot of competition, many companies are trying to make a carrier which is more efficient, reliable, easy to use and friendly.

The new services they made has the potential for all those things.

They are called Virtual Personal Assistants (VPA).

There are many kind of VPAs. But we are going to describe VPAs for Mobile which are for General Purpose.


What is Virtual Personal Assistant? A Virtual Personal Assistant is an application program that

understand the natural language and complete the electronic task for end user.

Such Tasks, which might have been performed by a personal assistant, including: Reading text or E-mail messages aloud.

Looking up phone numbers.

Placing calls & reminding the end user about appointments.


VPA allows mobile professionals to remotely access and manage information over telephones like:

Messaging: Mobile professionals can manage voice-mail, email and faxes.

It can take over all book keeping, bills and account payables.

It can plan your next company event or outing for an enjoyable & memorable time for all.

VPA in Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Today, VPAs are programmed with Artificial Intelligence.

It is programmed with Machine Learning.

It is programmed with Voice Recognition Technology.

It uses sophisticated Algorithms to learn from data input & become better at predicting the end user’s needs.

Virtual Personal Assistants (VPAs)

Popular VPAs currently include: Apple’s Siri

Google Now

Microsoft’s Cortana

Many more.

Working of VPA

Features of all VPAs are almost same but the working of VPAs is different.

I will discuss the working of Siri.

Siri recognize: Your voice

Understand your commands

Communicate with server

Interpret your request

Retrieve information for you.

Siri’s Working

Siri Basically consists of three layers. Speech to text

Text Analysing

Interpret commands

Siri’s Working (First Layer):

Speech to text: A Piece of software that converts audio to text.

It doesn’t understand just anything you might say.

Siri has much easier job than Dragon or Mac’s speech recognition facility.

It has to understand the words & sentences that are related to appointment contacts, messages, maps etc.

Example:

When we say “Car to Aftab”, it will write it as “Call to Aftab”.

Siri’s Working (Second Layer):

Text Analysing: Converted text is just letters for computer.

A piece of software convert text to something that is understandable for computer.

Computer understand the command, so Siri convert this text to computer command.

Computer command consists of functions & the parameters of these functions.

Example:

What will be the function & parameters of “Set Reminder” command.

(Second Layer) Continue…

Siri maps the words to functions and parameters to create a command that computer can understand.

Example of Reminder.

Ambiguous or Half command Get more information to clarify if command is ambiguous.

Full Command

Auto generated Parameter

Siri’s Working (Third Layer):

Interpret commands: In this level Siri isn’t doing much.

Example:

You already have calendar app & you press button to view & create appointments & meetings. Siri will push these button for you.

In this layer, that mapped computer command, go to server through internet.

Simultaneously, your speech evaluated locally.

A local recogniser communicate with server to judge whether command will be best handle locally or not.

Example:

Play Music, Restaurant reservation, Movie Rating.

Features

Make Phone Calls: Call to Faisal Ali, Call to University of Gujrat

Get Direction Direct me to Fawara Chok, Take me to Fawara Chok

Send Messages Email to Aftab Subject Hello, Send SMS to Aftab where are you?,

Message Aftab

Set Reminders Remind me to go for walk at 7AM, Remind me to study when I’m at

home.

Features Continue….

Ask Questions Will it rain today?, What is 34 times 86?, How many Pakistani rupees

are in One Dollar?, Tell me the height of Minar-e-Pakistan.

Schedule meetings & Appointments Schedule a meeting tomorrow morning with Aftab

Play Music & Videos Play Life of Pie, Play songs from (album name)

Set Alarms Wake me up at 6.30AM

Feature Comparison

Features of all VPAs are almost common.

But there are some features which some VPAs doesn’t have.

And these features make some VPAs more reliable, sufficient and attract to customer.

Features of some VPAs are:

Features:Cortana Google Now Siri

Summon with hardware button

Yes No – always listening of ‘OK Google’

Yes

Web Search Yes Yes Yes

Geofencing (e.g. reminding you to make a purchase when you’re near a business)

Yes Yes Limited

Predictive Notifications (e.g. traffic on your commute is bad)

Yes Yes No

Event or Contact based notification (when your sister calls, tell her happy birthday)

Yes Yes Yes

Answers sassy questions like “Are you sexy?”

Yes No Yes

Timing & Accuracy: We asked all three assistants the same series of questions, to

measure which one performed the best.

“Where can I see the movie The Equalizer?” Siri (3.5 seconds)

Cortana (6 seconds)

Google Now (5.47 seconds)

Best Answer: Google Now: While Siri was faster, Google offered a more comprehensive listing of theatres.

Timing & Accuracy:

Remind me to pick up the dry cleaning. Siri: 2.7 seconds.

Cortana: 5 seconds.

Google Now (6 seconds)

Best Answer: Siri: In terms of quickness and ease of use, it taps to set up the reminder

Conclusion:

So, these questions show that Siri is the fastest VPA than others.

Google Now is the VPA which almost give accurate and to the point answers most of the time.

Interface

Cortana & Siri’s interfaces look similar.

Google Now is a bit More involved.

Google Now involves a cards layout that tries to anticipate what you might want.

Siri’s Interface:

You don’t need to tell Siri much about yourself.

When you activate the Siri, a black screen will be adorned with a wavy white line along the bottom and white text that reads, “What can I help you with?” in the centre of the screen.

Cortana:

Once activated, Cortana greets you with a dashboard, themed in blue.

Google Now’s Interface:

Opening Google Now displays a Google search bar at the top, with a microphone icon on the right.

Google is fairly good at knowing when each card is pertinent and pushing that one to the top.

Interface Winner:

Google Now: The Android assistant offers information you want before you can

even ask. Plus, it can better sort your results.

Overall Winner

By My Mind, overall winner is Siri Siri was the first Virtual Personal Assistant

Apple has the time to perfect it.

Siri Cortana Google Now

Voice X

Voice Activation X

Touch Activation X X X

Interface X

Gathering information

X X

Unique abilities X X

Totals 4 3 3

Thank You…

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