InfoWiz: A Social Agent

          
InfoWiz voice-interactive kiosk and screen shot

The InfoWiz projects adds a more social aspect to a community of OAA agents.  An animated participant can watch user interactions with the system, and act in the role of guide, advisor, critic, teacher, gopher, or collaborative participant. 

The first InfoWiz application was a kiosk placed in the entrance to SRI's Engineering building.  Visitors to SRI speak into a telephone and can browse a set of webpages by voice.  InfoWiz can answer questions, help the user navigate efficiently throughout the webspace, take the user on tours, or simply provide informative or humoristic comments to enhance the user's experience. 

In other applications, InfoWiz was integrated with Microsoft's powerpoint and could answer verbal questions at the end of an presentation.  InfoWiz technology was also used as part of the "OfficeMate" project, guiding users through the physical space at SRI.

• Video (OfficeMATE and InfoWIZ): REAL: 8 MB

• Paper: InfoWiz: An Animated Voice Interactive Information System. (PDF: 110 Kb)

• HTML: Description of InfoWiz project