I added a couple of features. EZ-AI has memorized the Bible and is ready to share verses with you by using the /B switch. Simply say the book, Chapter and from verse and to verse and EZ-AI will pass these back to ARC.

EZ-AI now has all of the cities of the United States memorized and knows how to get to them. You can type in to and from addresses anywhere in the word, or speak cities in the United states and It will give you driving instructions (which you can request to be printed). You speak the name of your from city and state, and then your destination city and state, and then "Get Directions" and EZ-AI will get directions for you and pass them to ARC. Once the directions have been retrieved, you can also say Print Directions and EZ-AI will send these directions to your default printer.

Here is a complete list of the functions available through EZ-AI. /I open the EZ-AI interface. /P use the email checker process which tells you how many new emails you have since it last checked. /D uses the database to store or retrieve data from it. This is used by EZ-AI for many of its abilities. /R use to get an RSS feed, parse it and return the results back to ARC /C use the chatbot /W use the Wikipedia (smart) query. /U use the UPC code search. /B Gets verses of the Bible for you upon request /M gives you driving directions. Only United States cities are populated at this time. You can key in any addresses regardless of country. I will start working on the Skype interface next. I will have the next version available for download after I attempt to add the Skype feature.

I haven't started working on the Skype interface yet. I wanted to get the last 2 parts buttoned down a bit more. There is a new install on http://cochranrobotics.com/EZ-Robot-Plugins and a new patch for those who have installed this already. This is a large download compared to the others because it contains a list of all of the cities in the world which is then loaded into the Cities database. Once you have this installed, feel free to clear out the Install and Patch directories under C:\EZ-AI to free up some room.

The download now is up to 6.71 meg because of the need to script out all of the inserts for over 80K cities.

Here is the new usage information. I added a couple of features to the /B and /M options

Usage:

Just starting EZ-AI will take you to an outdated help file. I will be working on correcting that. To use EZ-AI you need to pass parameters into it. These are as follows:

/I open the EX-AI interface.

/P use the email checker process which tells you how many new emails you have since it last checked. The EZ-AI configuration file has EmailServer, UserName, Password, and LastTimeEmailChecked values that will need to be configured to use this feature.

/D uses the database to store or retrieve data from it. Please see the Example Project for examples of how to use this feature.

/R use to get an RSS feed, parse it and return the results back to ARC Please see the Example Project for examples of how to use this feature

/C use the chatbot This requires Program-O to be installed to use this feature. It requires that you install IIS, MySQL, PHP and Python. Saying Goodbye will close the chat.

/W use the Wikipedia (start.csail.mit.edu) query. Just speak the question and Wikipedia will be searched for information on the topic EZ-AI understood you speak. Saying Goodbye will close the wikipedia search.

/U use the UPC code search. The EZ-AI configuration file has a UPCServer value which needs to be changed to your APIKeyCode from EANData.com. Saying Goodbye will close the UPC code search.

/B Gets verses of the bible for you upon request This has 3 modes. /B normal will use the normal interface /B daily will get the daily verse from the Bible. /B random will get a random verse from the Bible. After saying the Book Chapter and Verses you would say read verses to pass the variable back to ARC. After getting the verses, you can say Print Verses to print out the verses that you just retrieved. If you make a mistake or EZ-AI misunderstands what you requested, you can say Make Correction and the form will be cleared and you can start over. Saying Goodbye will close the Bible search.

/M gives you driving directions from Google Maps. There is an extensive list of cities that are populated in the cities table in the database. EZ-AI configuration file has a DefaultContenant value which is used to limit the cities to a specific continent.
EZ-AI configuration file has a HomeAddress value which allows you to say home to populate the field with this value. EZ-AI configuration file has a EZRobotAddress value which allows you to say EZ Robot to populate the field with EZ-Robots address. EZ-AI configuration file has a GoogleMapsAPIKeycode which needs to be modified with your own Google developer APIKeyCode Saying Goodbye will close the Directions search. Saying Get Directions will send these directions to ARC. After the directions are retrieved, saying Print Directions will print these directions to your default printer. If you make a mistake or EZ-AI misunderstands what you requested, you can say Make Correction and the form will be cleared and you can start over.

/S launches skype. Their API isn't worth messing with.

I am working on another feature to allow the robot to be a telepresence robot through Skype.

Please download the Example Project to see uses of these in scripts.

Thanks for the update. David you are putting a lot in to this. Good job. I look forward to getting this downloaded.

I like the fact Mr Cochran that you put the Bible verses in there. Good job.

It looks like Skype integration is pretty weak at this point. You can use the /S switch to launch skype but their API is outdated at this point, so other than launching skype, that is all that I am adding for it at this point.

I am looking for a food recipe site with an API. Yummie.com wants cash so they are out, and BigOven.com seems to be having problems issueing an API key. Both allow you to build shopping lists based on the recipes the you choose. This could be cool as the robot could then print out the items needed for the recipe. The BigOven API looks pretty cool, but their site is broken.

I love it when you step away from something and an idea hits you right between the eyes. The Chatbot has been bugging me. The dictation dictionary in Windows in pretty bad. It is much better to use a dictionary that is of a set number of words. Chat bots can go off in any direction so it makes it difficult to do this.

Because EZ-AI uses a local chatbot which is running off of a database, I am able to pull the phrases that can be said from that database (the AIML) as the program loads. This has taken the accuracy of the speech from about 10% to about 90% and still allows you to ask anything of the robot that you could before. Because each person has their own chatbot the speech for each persons install is going to be different so making a static list is impossible. This solution loads that persons AIML and makes it far more reliable. Because this comes from the actual AIML table for your chatbot, it gives the most usability and highest results possible. It does take a bit of time for the information to load from the database, but this is far less frustrating than the robot misunderstanding everything that was being said. It also saves me about $5,000 right now on the DNS developer license. I am sure that will come one day, but this just drastically improved EZ-AI.

EZ-AI is getting another new feature. I want to be able to use this with elderly people who need assistance from time to time. By using the /E switch in EZ-AI, the user will be asked what type of emergency this is based on a list (that you populate in EZ-AI database). When the user says what type of emergency that it is, a post is made to their facebook account requesting assistance (again based on the text you define in the EZ-AI database).

I will be adding more social media feeds but Social Media is an amazing way to get help to people in need. I have seen this first hand when people posted that they were trapped in a house after a tornado event a couple of years ago. I should have this out in a couple of days. I would recommend that you call this with something like "ROBOT I HAVE AN EMERGENCY" so that it isn't triggered by accident. You could also then have the robot ask if this is an emergency and wait for confirmation before calling the EZ-AI with the /E switch. EZ-AI will take over asking what type of emergency it is. If there is no response within 15 seconds, the robot will post the item from the database that is called EMERGENCY and the text that you have provided for this record.