A virtual shopper customer assistant in pervasive environments

n this work we propose a smart, human-like PDA-based personal shopper assistant. The system is able to understand the user needs through a spoken natural language interaction and then stores the preferences of the potential customer. Subsequently the personal shopper suggests the most suitable items and shops that match the user profile. The interaction is given by automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech technologies; localization is allowed by the use of Wireless technologies, while the interaction is performed by an Alice-based chat-bot endowed with reasoning capabilities. Besides, being implemented on a PDA, the personal shopper satisfies the user needs of mobility and it is also usable on different mobile devices.