VOX system: a semantic embodied conversational agent exploiting linked data

• DOI: 10.1007/s11042-014-2295-5
• Publication Date: 2014-10-08T08:03:20Z
• Authors: Francisco J. Serón; Carlos Bobed
• Keywords: 0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering; 02 engineering and technology

In the last few years, the use of ontologies has spread thanks to the irruption of the Semantic Web. They have become a crucial tool in information systems as they explicitly state the meaning of information, making it possible to share it and to achieve higher levels of interoperability. However, being knowledge representation models as they are, other fields can take advantage of their characteristics to extend their capabilities. In particular, in the context of Embodied Conversational Agents, they can be used to provide them with semantic knowledge and, therefore, enhance their intellectual skills. In this paper, we propose an approach to explore the synergies between these technologies. Thus, we have developed a multimodal ECA that exploits the knowledge provided by the Linked Data initiative to help users in their search information tasks. Based on a semantic-guided keyword search, our approach is flexible enough to: 1) deal with different Linked Data repositories and 2) handle different search/knowledge domains in a multilingual way. To illustrate the potential of our approach, we have focused on the case of DBpedia, as it mirrors the information stored in the Wikipedia, providing a semantic entry to it.