AnHitz, virtual science expert

2008/12/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Teknologia

The AnHitz demos or prototype is the result of a large project developed between 2006 and 2008. AnHitz is a virtual character expert on scientific issues. Anhitz speaks Basque. He is able to understand the questions that arise and answer them. He is therefore an interactive virtual character, expert in science and euskaldun.

If in addition to answering questions, you are given a word or term, you are able to search for documents containing that word. To accomplish this task, search different databases of science and technology on the Internet. This is a multilingual search that seeks links in Basque, Spanish and English. The documents in Basque are issued as they are, the documents in Spanish are translated into Basque and those in English are issued in the original language. If desired, the system reads these texts in any of the three languages.

Its appearance has been donated by the research center VICOMTech-IK4, taking advantage of its technology for the creation of avatars or virtual characters. The UPV-EHU Aholkularitza research group and the Robotiker-Tecnalia research centre have trained in voice knowledge and synthesis. The answer system to questions and the ability to translate documents on the Internet automatically into Basque is due to the IXA group of the UPV. Finally, the ability to search for multilingual documents is the result of the work done by the R&D group of the Elhuyar Foundation.