Zabaware Support Forums

Zabaware Forums => Ultra Hal 7.0 => Topic started by: Medeksza on August 16, 2002, 07:48:57 pm

Title: Ultra Hal Assistant 4.5 to be released August 23rd
Post by: Medeksza on August 16, 2002, 07:48:57 pm

Zabaware will release Ultra Hal Assistant 4.5 exactly 1 week from now on August 23rd. This will be a free upgrade for all Ultra Hal Assistant 4.0 users. The new version will have the following changes:

Speech recognition improvements:

• When multiple speaker training profiles exist, Hal will prompt the user to choose which training profile to use. This will fix problems people have had with training sessions not improving speech recognition accuracy.
• A dictation function has been added to the "Hal Pad" sub-application. Hal will open the Hal Pad program when the user asks for dictation. Whatever the user speaks will be written to the text file.

Graphics and character animation improvements:

• Agent characters are now resizable
• Agent characters will use the voice selected in Hal's speech options rather then a hard-coded voice.
• Hal's character plug-in system has been expanded to allow for upcoming animated characters to be released at a later date. Although not yet available, the future characters will be animated 3D in realtime with realistic emotions and will have full speech/lip syncronization.
• Two new skin interfaces have been added

Speed improvements:

• The KeywordBrain DLL function has been converted from Visual Basic to C++ resulting in a speed increase
• The QABrain DLL function has been converted from Visual Basic to C++ resulting in a speed increase
• The search fields in the database used by both the KeywordBrain and QABrain must now be all UPPER CASE. All database fields have been changed to meet this new requirement and the Hal Brain Editor will automatically enforce this. This helps speed up Hal's thinking.
• Running the Hal 4.0 brain on this new DLL results in approxemetly 3 times faster thinking. However, because the new Hal 4.5 conversational database has doubled in size, the speed gain is minimal. However, running the Hal 4.0 brain with the new Hal 4.5 program is possible.

Intelligence improvements:

• Hal's conversational database has more than doubled since Hal 4.0.
• Hal has a new "Figure out context" routine. When Hal is unsure what a user is talking about, Hal will look at the previous sentence for help.
• The algorithm used for calculating a relevance score with the QABrain function has been rewritten, resulting in more accurate responses.
• The QABrain function no longer throws out 100% relevance responses. Originally this was put in place to prevent Hal from repeating the user or himself. A new function has been put in place to prevent repetition and the internal "Q" workaround is no longer needed and has been removed.
• Hal has a new paraphrase function and may paraphrase the user in a response.
• Hal is able to generate new thoughts from subject/predicate assembly
• Hal now has special functions designed to respond when the user talks about himself or about Hal specifically
• CheckLinkingVerb function in the DLL has been improved.
• Business talk routine updated, now includes bizmore.brn
• The following database files have been updated: substitution.brn, dontknow.brn, userrepeating.brn, corections.brn, choice.brn, disqualify1.brn, extract3.brn updated.

Other changes:

• The Hal dialer now uses Windows built in TAPI service to dial phone numbers. COM port selection is no longer required. This fixes the majority of problems associated with this feature.
• Hal will no longer run in Windows 95. Hal will require Windows 98, ME, NT4SP6, 2000, or XP.
• Various other minor bug fixes and script changes.

Robert Medeksza

Title: Ultra Hal Assistant 4.5 to be released August 23rd
Post by: G0th52 on August 20, 2002, 06:52:13 pm

more than cool for sure!