Hi Chuck, your goal is great. Why don’t you build your bot on an existing 3D playform?
Such as second life or opensim? So that you can focus on your AI moudle and can easily to show to others.

Actually, I have the similar goal of you. But It’s my second step. I host a region (256m*256m) at osgrid.org which is based on the open source project opensim. I can control my bot avatar talking, walking and getting information of other avatars and objects by a radar.

Thanks Nathan for adding OpenSim and OSGrid. I’ve inserted hyperlinks.

I have once made use of a object oriented state machine, with states as objects, and a hierarchy of inherited states, which virtualized threads. That worked very well. So I forgot the syntax, but it was some like:

mmmm, actually forgot it all :-(

sorry for deluting your thread, just thought I could help (I’ll keep on trying )

Hi Nathan,
Thanks for the link to osgrid.com.  I’ll explore it a bit when I get a chance. Is it possible to take a look at the programming code that would be available to develop an avatar’s AI? 

As a programmer I do like being in control of my code environment.  However osgrid sounds interesting. Is there a link that allows you to explore the possibilities without registering?  Do you have any source code (snippets) that you could share?

*Update*
I’ve had a few hours over the weekend to explore ‘context determination’ concepts. I’m working on a simple hypothesis. “If I collect, count, and analyze all of the pronouns in an English text, then I can determine the type of document.” Types refer to commentaries, procedures, news reports, blogs, etc.

I built an Excel app that allows me to paste text from an internet source, categorize the text, add a comment, and then automatically evaluates the document. It performs a wordcount and looks for 73 pronouns.

I’ve started collecting speeches from Obama, Reagon, Kennedy, etc.  I’ll slowly collect more docs as I go along.

That’s it for now.

Chuck

I have some testing code but not stable. There is a related project openMetaverse http://www.libsecondlife.org/. It’s an open source text client for opensim which is in C#. What I did is to call the functions in the class TestClient and related classes in openMetaverse. By this way, my bot can chat with other avatars in opensim world, getting information of other avatars and objects, and control my avatar to walk.

[offTopic]

Hey, Chuck. I took the liberty of “swiping” one of the sprites from the game and turning it into an icon, and then inserting that icon into the game’s exe file. I hope you don’t mind. I did nothing else to it, I promise.

If interested, both the icon and the modified exe are available on my downloads page to check out. http://www.geekcavecreations.com/Downloads/gc17_chuck_extras.zip

[/offTopic]

Hi Nathan,
Thanks for the link.  I’m really into designing my virtual world and bot framework myself. However, the notion of a bot chatting with other bots is interesting.  When I’m not in the mood to code I’ll take a look at the link. Thanks!

David,
I’m not sure if I should feel glad or violated. You inserted a graphic into my exe. I think you link has become a crime scene. =) j/k

Thanks! Not sure how you did this but I appreciate it. I’ve got one ‘fun zapping’ bug to correct and then I’ll recompile and re-post…with your sprite of course.  It looks very nice and original. Thanks again for doing this.

Regards,
Chuck

I’m a man of many talents.

Actually, it’s not hard to insert an icon into a Windows app, if you have the right tools. I used Microangelo’s Studio app to create the icon from one of your sprite images, and a program called ResHack to insert the icon into your exe file. Studio is part of a suite of icon/graphic manipulation tools, and ResHack is a free program that can manipulate the internal resourses (icons, internal images, string tables, dialogs, etc.) of any Win32 executables and DLL’s. They’re very handy tools for those of us who don’t like to “leave well enough alone”.

hey there,
I’ve clicked the zip link from Dave, opened it, but the EXE file gave an error.
Running Vista, an exe file should simply run, shouldn’t it?

The file that I placed on my website is just an upgrade package that still requires the original 55MB download from Chuck’s website. If you only downloaded the file from my site, you’ll get all sorts of errors. I’m sorry for any confusion there, but I didn’t think that hosting the entire file would be a good idea.

Hi,
I’ve spent time with Walter tonight.  I admit that my C++ code is a bit complicated and somewhat time consuming in terms of ‘development’ and ‘testing’ of ideas.  So, I’m going through the program spec I wrote http://www.chuckbolin.com/walter/spec.pdf and I’m porting it over to my Excel/VBA app as a scaled down laboratory for developing the chat bot. 

Admittedly, I’ve been coding a whole lot these past several months in VBA and I’m much faster than in C++...especially testing complex ideas.  I’m also interested in pushing VBA. Here’s what I’ve done tonight.

* Developed a framework of modules for downloading URLs and scraping web pages.
* Retrieve master time data from US Naval Observatory (UTC, EDT, CDT, etc.).
* Retrieve weather forecast data from Weather.gov.

I’ll add a time simulator so I can test the dynamically generated weather data using forecast information as a boundary. 

If you guys can run Excel 2007 I’ll be glad to share this project and post updated.

Regards,
Chuck

Chuck, thanks for sharing this awesome document. It’s really really impressive!!!!!! Obviously, I haven’t been able to read it all, but was touched (is that the way to say it), about your decision to name your chatbot ‘walter’.

This chatbot project seems to be growing, extending all the time, am I right? Are you doing this all by yourself?

Hi Erwin,
Thank you for the complement!

I’ve been thinking a lot about chat bots and AI over the past 6 months. I’m fueled regularly by what I read here in the forums. The problem is one get too many ideas. I’ve captured what I can in the spec.  Of course, it’s all subject to change based upon new or revised thoughts.

Yes, I’m working this project alone. 

I would definitely say the project is being extended.  I continue to develop smaller programs to test and practice various ideas…that I hope to recombine one day into the main program.  I think of Walter as a collection of algorithms, processes, concepts, and interfaces. I figure they can be translated into any programming language down the road.

Regards,
Chuck

*Update*
In the past, I’ve introduced these two labels.

Carolina - the program containing the virtual world.
Walter   - the chat bot that exists within the virtual world of Carolina.

I’m introducing another label.

XBot     - name of the Excel tool I’m using to design, test, and develop ideas that will be added to both Carolina and to Walter. NOTE: I’ve googled ‘XBot’ and I’m not bothered. =)

New changes (thanks to Nathan). I’m removing Walter from Carolina so that they are two distinct programs.  There are a few of advantages to this design change.

1) Walter could interface with other virtual worlds via an ‘interface’.
2) Other bots could interface with Carolina.
3) Walter could leave his home in Carolina and travel to places hosting the Loebner prize. =)

Is there a standard interface connecting virtual bots with virtual worlds? I don’t know.

Regarding chat, I’ll build a 3rd app to allow humans to interface with Walter. I’ll most likely use the protocol used in the Loebner competitions.

I realize this is an ever changing design but I think its better than what I presently have.

Regards,
Chuck

*Update*

No more tweets!!  Twitter has replaced it’s basic and simple authentication with something quite a bit difficult near the end of August. My C++ code doesn’t work on tweeting now. I’ve spent nearly 4 hours tonight trying to sort out the new authentication ‘oAuth’ in VBA.  I’ll set this aside for now.

Regards,
Chuck