by U-Hopper SRL
Summary
The Talk2Fiesta experiment aimed at developing and deploying a chatbot allowing citizens to interact with IoT devices through a conversational interface. The vision behind the experiment is that individuals should be able to ‘chat’ with their smart city in much the same way they do with friends and family. Accordingly, people should be able to ask questions to IoT-connected devices (e.g., information about their current status), as well as to send commands to IoT actuators. And they should be able to do it without having to know the low-level technical details of the specific sensor or IoT technology implemented.
During the experiment, the U-Hopper team developed a set of core enablers for connecting various chat applications (Facebook Messenger, Slack) to the FIESTAIoT platform APIs via a Natural Language Processing engine. The experiment, in particular, showed that the semantic interoperability feature of the FIESTA-IoT platform, which conceals the heterogeneity of underlying devices, data and testbed infrastructure, allows for the fast and cost-effective development of chatbots. The chatbot was connected to SmartSantander and SmartICS testbeds and able to conversate in three different languages (English, Spanish, Italian).
The chatbot was showcased to a plurality of stakeholders (including smart city councils, municipalities, investors and IT companies), and commercial exploitation activities are currently ongoing.