NLP is Hard... But with AboditNLP it&#39;s not as...

Thursday, February 09, 2012

NLP is Hard... But with AboditNLP it's not as...

Elegant Code - NuGet Project Uncovered: AboditNLP

"If you are coming to this series of posts for the first time you might check out my introductory post for a little context.

AboditNLP is a Natural Language Processor library. This kind of stuff in interesting, but not something I have chosen to spend my time on.

It has a demo http://nlp.abodit.com/home/demo which gives you sample things to type to the library. ..."

AboditNLP

Natural Language Conversations

A conversational natural language engine allows humans and computers to converse in a natural way using typed messages. These messages may be exchanged using SMS, XMPP chat, email, or web-based chat.

Conversational interfaces are an improvement over form-filling interfaces for many applications. One of the best known examples of this is the input box on Google calendar where you can type something like '10:20 meeting at Larry's' and it will create a meeting starting at 10:20 and will set the location to 'Larry's'. This particulare example is a hybrid interface where a conversational element has been integrated into a traditional form-based interface. A pure conversation interface is often called a 'chatbot'.

Conversational interfaces are particularly well suited to mobile applications where the small screen, tiny keyboard and lack of a mouse makes traditional form-filling a tedious and error prone experience.

Consider for example the simple request what orders did we receive last month on a friday after 4pm. What would the dialog look like to specify a query like that? What if, instead, your users could simply enter what they are looking for? That's what a conversational natural language engine can do for your business.

NLP is hard

General purpose NLP is a really hard problem but for a specific application domain (like CRM integration, product support, home automation, ...) it's possible to define a sufficiently large recognition base that you can provide a good experience to your users. This library is focused on providing you the tools you need to create such domain specific chatbots or to add natural language capable input boxes to your traditional forms-based applications. ...

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Software and Licensing

This Natural Language engine will soon be available for download and integration in your .NET projects. For personal, non-commercial projects there is no charge. For use in commercial applications and for any consulting requirements please ..."

AboditNLP - Natural Language Interface to Home Automation

"Rather than hunting through a multi-layer web-page-by-web-page interface all aspects of a home can be controlled and/or queried directly using single line commands issued from a smartphone or computer using SMS or a chat client like Google Talk.

Examples of things you can do when you connect a home automation system to this natural language engine can be seen in this actual dialog with my own home automation system:-

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Interesting... I can see the applications for this already. Image speech to text and then mix this in? hum... (of course that could lead to some pretty funny results too...lol)