I’d like to invite AIML botmasters to have a closer look at our CallMom app.  CallMom is a voice activated, mobile virtual personal assistant that uses AIML to process user inputs.  We’ve added a whole new set of tags to AIML so that a bot can control device actions such as placing a call, sending a text, or retrieving information from web services.  The AIML for these functions is released in an open source project on Google Code.

Botmasters with experience writing their own AIML should find it easy to add the CallMom AIML to their bots.  The app may be connected to your own pandorabot, so that you can customize the replies completely. 

CallMom is still in an early beta release stage, and we welcome your feedback.  You can find out more about CallMom here.

This is truly good news!  Congratulations on really advantageous timing, (in my opinion).

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history

> http://www.quora.com/Android-Applications/Can-Android-2-x-phone-apps-be-used-on-Android-3-x-and-4-x-tablets

Since I’m on iPod Touch, I don’t need another pocket device, so am thinking about getting a new Android tablet for testing CallMom.  Samsung Galaxy wifi-only mini-tablets look interesting (no plan required, as with iPod Touch).  Most Android tablets seem to be running Honeycomb or Ice Cream Sandwich (see version history above).  I asked the question on Quora (above 2) about upward compatibility, which was answered theoretically affirmative. 

Before I buy, I would just like to know if anyone has tried CallMom on an Android tablet and has it actually working ??

Richard Wallace - May 1, 2012:

Botmasters with experience writing their own AIML should find it easy to add the CallMom AIML to their bots.  The app may be connected to your own pandorabot… and we welcome your feedback.

I’m assuming, then, that this applies to the free hosting server as well as the paid, more reliable one.

Marcus, I’ve seen CallMom running on several tablets.  You are correct that in principle the app should work with any Android 2.2 or higher system.  For development, I got myself a very cheap Android 2.3.1 tablet which works fine, except that it doesn’t have a microphone, so the voice activation feature is disabled.  The other tablets I’ve seen were newer, more featurefull Ice Cream Sandwich systems, and CallMom seems to work well on those.

Thunder, yes, you can connect CallMom to your bot on the free server.  To enable the CallMom device control features, you can grab the AIML from http://code.google.com/p/aiml-en-us-pandorabots-callmom/ and add it to your bot.  There are two versions of some files, one version using the <learn> tag and the other using the persistent <learnf> tag.  The free server currently supports only the <learn>.

Don’t get a cheap Tablet is my advice.  Aim for 2.3 or above.  Buy the best you can afford…Samsung’s machines look good and Asus’ Transformer Prime is the one I would pick.  Oh and get a capacitive screen, resistive ones are not much fun.

Anyway, I am liking CallMom.  I told it I didn’t feel well and it gave me some hospitals and showed them on the map, very nice.

One thing I am having difficulty with is the voice recognition.  For example I said “I am ill” and it thought I said “I am Hill” and commented that it was an odd name…

I think you need some way to confirm if what it thought it heard was actually what you said.  So maybe a ‘Correct’/‘Wrong’ button so you can at least try again.

Allowing us to connect to our own bots is great, now I can give up on my Pandorabot app

Roger, good idea for a Correct/Wrong button.  We’re currently relying on the Google Speech API which is not necessarily the highest quality voice recognition on the market (but has the advantage of being free).

Meanwhile you can train the bot to correct for speech recognition errors.  If you type in (not speak) the input “When I say I am hill I mean I am ill”, the bot will learn to make the correction for you.  You have to type it in because the speech API will recognize “When I say I am hill I mean I am hill”.  One thing I’ve noticed is that the speech recognition errors are consistent for a given user.  So training the bot to recognize these errors works well.

In this beta release there is however a limitation on the persistence of what you teach the bot.  You can read a description of it here:
http://pandorabots.com/pandora/pics/callmom/index.html

Thank you Richard I will give that a go.  One thing I wondered is if it might be my English accent, perhaps the software is better with American accents ?  I am not really sure, but years ago when I tried out a speech led browser I had to do my best (awful) John Wayne impression and I got better results !

But despite this I think the App is a really neat creation and look forward to seeing what else you come up with for it

I am unsure about accents but my theory is: If you are using an Android device in the UK, the speech API is probably tuned for your accent.  If you are using a device in the US, the English accent may be less recognizable.

Roger, I am from Yorkshire and while developing the app, I have found I need to speak very clearly and with no accent. The Google Speech struggles if I say, “Ey up lad, hows tha doin?”

You’ve probably done it but make sure you have selected English(UK) in the Voice recognition settings of your device.

Hi Steve, yeah I have it set on UK.  I too found if I try to talk more precisely and try to define the words more clearly then it works a lot better - I try to do something like BBC English and things improve.  Coming from Norfolk we tend to run words into one another a lot, sort of like a drawl I suppose.

But I think you guys have done a great job, I liked the image feature, like say…“Show me a picture of a cat” and so on.

I bet it’s probably already on your minds, but some way to link into my phones photographs would be cool.  I’m not really sure how, maybe something like “Show me those photos of the day I was in London” or something and it opens a album view so you can flick through them.

Keep up the good work

Roger Davie - May 6, 2012:

... some way to link into my phones photographs would be cool.  I’m not really sure how, maybe something like “Show me those photos of the day I was in London” or something and it opens a album view so you can flick through them.

Your wish is my command. Try asking the default Mitsuku personality now and hopefully it should open your gallery (I’ve just coded it in the last 5 minutes though, so it may need fine tuning). This is one of the beauties of our app over certain others. We can keep it up to date all the time and develop new things within minutes without the user having to install an update.

Wow, quick service !

I tried saying a few things “Open my photos”, “Show me my photos”...I guess I am saying the wrong thing - what should I be saying please ?

BTW, is this site working even slower than normal or is it just me ?

What Steve said is absolutely true.  Unlike other VA apps, the A.I. for CallMom device control is an open source AIML project.  We can quickly and easily modify it to implement new ways of communicating with the app without having to change the app itself.  Ideas for new features might come from log file analysis, forums like this, or even Siri commercials. New changes are published almost immediately to the CallMom bots.

One of the design goals for CallMom was making the app as lightweight as possible.  All of the A.I. runs on the server-side.  This makes it not only easy to modify the A.I., but also easier to create CallMom apps for iPhone, Blackberry, Windows or any other mobile OS.  We don’t need to write an AIML interpreter for every app.  Each device OS has its own way to dial a number, send an SMS, open a browser etc., but the CallMom AIML should be the same for all of them.

CallMom AIML Project: http://code.google.com/p/aiml-en-us-pandorabots-callmom/

Yes I see, that’s a very nice way of doing it.

I must say, that despite being done server-side this assistant is very quick at replying.  There’s no lag or anything at all.

I took the liberty of adding you to the Chatterbot Collection and also dropped the topic in over on AiDreams (just a copy and paste of your press release) , I hope we can help to gain you some more exposure.

OK Steve, I think I had to do a mini update which I missed…works fine now.

“Show me my photos” -> Opens Gallery

Thank you