A group of students of the University of Communications has just successfully created an assistant app called JASSIS on mobile phones for Vietnamese users...
A group of students of the University of Communications has just successfully created a virtual assistant app called JASSIS on mobile phones for Vietnamese users. The product won the third prize at the Provincial Scientific & Technical Contest 2018-2019.
Assistant app for Vietnamese
Apple and Google are known for their pioneering in virtual assistant apps, namely Google Assistant for Android phones and Siri for Apple ones. However, the apps have been found not to work well for Vietnamese language. In 2018, when studying the subject Java, the researchers came up with the idea of making a virtual assistant app that works on the basis of speech recognition for Vietnamese users, says Student Nguyen Trong Nghia, Faculty of Information Technology, University of Communications, Head of the researchers’ group.
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After 3-month research, the JASSIS for Vietnamese users has come into being. The app has been developed based on advanced technology such as computer networking, web technology, restful API, voice-to-text conversion technology, etc. The app is for Vietnamese accents in most of regions in Vietnam. At first, the app had simple features such as asking the time, weather, dates, etc. After upgraded, JASSIS can help with making hands-free calls, messages, tasks; playing music and videos; searching the web for information about tourism, food, directions to the nearest tourist sites, restaurants, trade centers and so on in Khanh Hoa only with users’ voice.
Nghia started the JASSIS app to illustrate its features. The app began with greetings: “Hi. How can I help you?” in Vietnamese. “What time is it?” he asked. “It's nine eight,” it answered. “Who is Mark Zuckerberg?”. The answer appeared immediately with 5 photos and brief information about the person. All the information was read in Vietnamese by the assistant.
Continued upgrading
Nghia says during their research, as students, they had difficulties due to lack of knowledge and experience. They could not spend full time on the app development. They also need more knowledge and experience related to artificial intelligence and natural language processing. They did the research and learned at the same time.
Thanks to their lectures’ support and the joint effort of the group, the app has been successfully created, giving much convenience to users. The main task now is to improve JASSIS with more features. Especially, the group aims at giving health care support with knowledge about the use of some medicines, common diseases and information about the medicines users are taking. The app is expected to be improved and available for download for use free of charge soon, says Nguyen Trong Nghia.
Khanh Ha
Translated by N.T
