The technology of VPA
VPAs are generally able to perform the following tasks:
Interacting with web services to retrieve information and perform transactions; either through search queries, by linking to knowledge bases such as Knowledge Graph, or by engaging in transactional dialogs as well as launching and managing apps on the device, such as contacts, calendar, SMS, or clock.
Engaging in conversation with the user about random topics, for example, answering questions such as where do you live?, how old are you?, what languages do you speak?, or what sort of music do you like?. The VPA is expected to provide some sort of response to every question so as to be able to keep the conversation going even if it does not have a proper answer to the question.
The VoiceLaunch app presented in Chapter 4, Simple Voice Interactions shows how to launch an app on a device, while the MusicBrain app presented in Chapter 5, Form-filling Dialogs shows how to implement a transactional dialog using form-filling...
