1) Horoscopes
2) Questionnaires
3) Weather Forecast
4) Traffic Reports
5) News
6) On-line Shopping
7) Conventional Weather Forecast
8) Spoken SMS

1) Horoscopes

This service gives the callers updated information on the various Zodiac signs. The system asks the user what sign he or she wishes to know about, and he or she can answer, by voice, "Leo", or "Aquarius", for example.

The way the questions are asked to the callers changes, so that the usage or the clarifications that the machine requests about what has been said does not become tedious.

The technologies used are ASR, TTS, and IIWC™ to obtain up-to-date contents from an internet site. The texts in the pages are automatically converted by a speech synthesizer.

One could use the IBE™ technology also in this service, but for demonstration purposes, and taking into account the usage with telephones with loudspeakers, we chose not to use it to make sure it would not interfere with the ASR. For users that don't make use of loudspeakers the inclusion of IBE™ would not interfere with ASR. [voltar]

2) Questionnaires

This service allows callers to answer a questionnaire, in this case about their "psychological profile". They answer the questions they are asked by DTMF, and in the end they get a score that corresponds to a given psychological profile which is spoken to them by the IVR.

The technologies used are DTMF, TTS, IBE™, and IIWC™ to get the questions from a web site. The texts areconpara obter o conteúdo das perguntas e respostas a partir da WEB. The texts are automatically converted by a speech synthesizer. [voltar]

3) Weather Forecast

This service allows the users to know the weather forecasts for a given location of their choice. For that they choose a region by DTMF, and then a city.

It is possible to associate localization platforms to this service so that users don't have to navigate through menus. ASR could also be used for the choice of the city.

The technologies used are DTMF, TTS, IBE™, and IIWC™ to obtain the contents from a web site. The texts are automatically converted by a speech synthesizer. [voltar]

4) Traffic Reports

This service provides traffic report information from a web site, always up-to-date.

Whenever there is an occurrence or difficulty in the traffic the service includes the information and makes it available in the menu, so that you can know more details about it. In practice we can conclude that the service justifies well the (few) cents spent on the call. Especially useful on the road during the rush hour (of course using an ear piece or "hands-free" adaptor).

The technologies used are DTMF, TTS, IBE™, and IIWC™ to get the data from a web site. The texts are automatically converted by a speech synthesizer. [voltar]

5) News

This service is very similar to the traffic reports service, but for the highlights of the general national and international information.

We point out the usage of IBE™ technology so that we can use the common TTS technology, thus overcoming the usual difficulties of using monotone voices for reading the news, which typically need the reader's expression features.

The technologies used are DTMF, TTS, IBE™, e IIWC™ to get the up-t-date news from a web page. The texts are automatically converted by a speech synthesizer. [voltar]

6) On-line Shopping

This service intends to demonstrate how we can use the IVR technology for tasks of moderate to high complexity, based on the strong potential of the IIWC™ technology.

The users choose products, thus forming a "kart" or "basket", and in the end it's contents would be delivered to them at their home.

The technologies used are DTMF, TTS, and IIWC™ to get the list of products and prices from a web site. The texts are automatically converted by a speech synthesizer. [voltar]

7) Conventional Weather Forecast

This service shows how it is possible to develop services of moderate complexity with "conventional concatenation technology", as long as it is supported by the ICOT™ optimization technology, and by the IBE™ technology.

The database is not real, so by now it is snowing in Alentejo, but the demonstration focuses, mainly, on the voice technology.

The technologies used are DTMF, ICOT™, and IBE™. [voltar]

8) Spoken SMS

There is a service for the delivery of written messages (SMS), in wich the user sends an SMS with the destination number to the IVR, and it then makes a call to that destination and the message content's is read to him or her.

For example, the user sends the message:

"213100400#Bom dia mãe. Parabéns pelo teu aniversário do teu filho Joaquim."

(The message says "Good morning mother. Congratulations on your birthday from your son Joaquim.")

The IVR makes a call to 213100400 and reads the message "Bom dia mãe. Parabéns pelo teu aniversário do teu filho Joaquim. Repito... Bom dia mãe..." using the TTS technology.

Additionally we can allow the access to the service by e-mail, to demonstrate the reading of e-mails with TTS. The users send an e-mail to the IVR, that then makes a call to the requested number and reads the message. [voltar]

Glossary of technocal terms and technologies

IVR - Interactive Voice Response: Technology for establishing dialogues with speakers on the telephone. Currently INOV's In-IVR™ platform takes the concept further, being already a complete CTI platform, interacting with several information systems, and easily usable as a WEB portal.

DTMF - Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency: Industry standard tehnology that allows the input of digits from the telephone's keyboard.

TTS - Text-To-Speech: Automatic conversion from text to speech without the need for specific recordings. This technology relies on the algorithms of RealSpeak from L&H, currently owned by ScanSoft. INOV holds two licences for the usage of Portuguese "from Portugal" (not Brazilian Portuguese).

ASR - Automatic Speech Recognition: Recognition of words. This technology relies on Nuance's algorithms, for which INOV holds two licences for usage. Also available is an integration with PHILIPS.

IIWC™ - INOV Instant WEB Contents: INOV's proprietary technology that allows the IVR to access any WEB page available on the internet, and use it's it's contents (or part) in one or more services. These contents may be updated automatically, with the desired periodicity (from 10 segundos to several days), or on-demand when the service needs the information.

IBE™ - INOV Background Environment: INOV's proprietary technology that allows the IVR to recreate a given environment, by using several special effects, like background music, equalization, reverberation, delay, etc., to better immerse the caller and/or improve perception in hostile environments (like cellular phones used un automobiles, for instance).

ICOT™ - INOV Concatenated Optimization Technology: INOV's proprietary technology that allows the IVR to use pre-recorded sentences in a form so that the concatenations be as soft and discrete as possible. It is essentially an off-line technology.

API - Application Programming Interface: Interface for the programming of additional services and/or functionalities to the platform.

DLL - Dynamic Link Library: External library of functionalities that can be used by the platform.

General Description

The In-IVR™ platform is a natural application of the accumulated know-how within INOV, while INESC, in the last 10 years. It's a multi-service, modular, scalable, robust, and versatile platform, qualifying as telecom-grade.

Thanks to it's modularity it can be used with an almost absolute abstraction of the hardware, being very simple to install hundreds of thousand services in one or more machines, with one or more telephone accesses per machine.

It contains multiple statistic and alarm mechanisms, auto-recovery systems, among others, that give it irreprehensible up-times even for the most demanding applications of the telecommunications industry.

The platform easily integrates with any other INOV system, like SIMA™ or MultiSERV™, and even with external systems through a vast range of accesses and protocols.

Currently the platform uses the most recent speech recognition technologies from NUANCE and PHILIPS, either small or large vocabularies, and also speech synthesis in European Portuguese (among other languages) from SCANSOFT, constantly evolving to incorporate state-of-the-art technology in these areas.

It can include a C/C++ API (Windows), integrate with external DLL's, or a proprietary interpreted language (script) for easy development by the client. It includes a simulator so that one can test the services in ordinary computers (Windows 95/98/NT/2000), like laptops, for example.

Besides these possibilities offered by the platform, INOV offers services of consulting from the specification stage down to the implementation.