The Mobile Assistants Department is focused on delivering services, applications, and middleware to users making use of mobile and/or ubiquitous computing resources. As such, we are attempting to "assist" users in this environment by providing access to emerging technologies including natural language, voice, telephony, location-based services, and intelligent notification, while paying close attention to usability issues and user requirements. In this context, we have two primary project areas.

Mobile Assistant provides a natural language voice interface to messaging, calendaring, address book, and more. Applications for mobile devices entail the integration of various sources of data optimized for delivery to limited hardware resources and intermittently connected devices through wireless networks. Challenges posed by telephone interfaces lead to the exploitation of speech recognition through natural language understanding and text-to-speech conversion. We are building an automated assistant that is natural to use and can be an alternative to a human assistant, that can arrange meetings, make phone calls, take messages, and provide access to personal-organizer information. Key components are powerful interaction through the phone, instant messaging, and asynchronous text messaging, all according to user preferences.

The Context-aware Computing focuses on using context information about users and entities such as inventories and services, to provide valuable services to end-users. The primary focus right now is in the area of services based on location-specific information. Location-aware applications or services are those in which the location of a person or an object is used to shape or focus the application or service. These technologies enable new applications, such as a driving assistant that proactively alerts a driver to traffic congestion ahead and suggests an alternate route. Location-aware applications are arguably most highly valuable for mobile users. This user’s very mobility, however, also presents a significant challenge for application developers, for example, location-based services available in one region may become unavailable or irrelevant in another region. We are addressing this and other challenges through our Atlas and Bluetooth projects.