Geppetto Labs

Putting the IV into Intelligent Virtual Assistants

Mark Stephen Meadows 06 Mar 2014

The incoming second wave of contextual agents There's a virtual lobby of Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) waiting to help us these days. These multi-million dollar systems include Yahoo's Don...

Two ears, one mouth (or, Somatic analytics, and a talk with Dr. Skip Rizzo)

Mark Stephen Meadows 20 Nov 2013

This article returns to the thread of the last few months by looking at how robots can measure our emotions and body language. My aunt, a Tennessee tobacco grower, used to remind me that God gave m...

In-corporating body language into NLP (or, More notes on the design of automated body language)

Mark Stephen Meadows 07 Aug 2013

This article discusses how body language is a part of natural language, personality, and NLP design. The article covers various methods for approaching this problem and makes recommendations for the r...

My robot is smelling my dirty laundry (or, Notes on privacy, PRISM, and home service robotics)

Mark Stephen Meadows 03 Jul 2013

This article considers privacy in robotic systems (such as personal service robotics) as being of greater importance than privacy in telecommunications (such as Internet). We will return to our regula...

“A Paro walks into a club…” (or, Notes on the design of automated body language)

Mark Stephen Meadows 05 Jun 2013

This article discusses personality design and how proper natural language interface design includes body language. The article is about the design of hearts and minds for robots. It argues that psyc...

The uncanny valet (or, Notes on the design of robot psychology)

Mark Stephen Meadows 04 May 2013

This article outlines the problems of today's phone and online help systems and offers solutions to conversational systems of tomorrow. The article is about the design of hearts and minds for robots, ...

AFK (or, Robotic free speech, and what you can do to help)

Mark Stephen Meadows 03 Apr 2013

This article looks at how the robotics industry of today is following in the footsteps of the personal computer industry of yesterday, and why Natural Language Processing, like the Graphical User Inte...

The death of search (or, My dysfunctional relationship with Siri)

Mark Stephen Meadows 06 Mar 2013

This article looks at the arrival of systems such as Siri, Google Now, and Watson and claims that these systems are the search engines of the next decade because they mine intimate data. Since they ...