Cardiff University develops personal assistant technology

Cardiff University has developed a virtual assistant that can communicate in a human like way, similar to smartphone helpers such as Apple's Siri or Microsoft's Cortana.

Using controlled natural language technology developed by IBM, the system, which is a currently just a research project and named Sherlock, has been tested in a range of scenarios, including helping the emergency services and as an information app at a festival. Prof Alun Preece said about the similarities: "With Siri I take it out to ask for directions and it gives me driving instructions even though I always take the train." Of Sherlock, he commented: "I would tell Sherlock that I take the train and so it would know that I always take the train and would give me that information."

Cardiff University is currently fifth in the Research Excellence Framework, with an impressive 87% of its submitted work classed as ‘world leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’.

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