WXGURU: AN ONTOLOGY DRIVEN CHATBOT PROTOTYPE FOR ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE OUTREACH AND EDUCATION

Chatbots are computer programs designed to simulate an ‘intelligent' conversation with one or more human users via auditory or textual methods. These programs typically scan user inputs for keywords and then extract a reply with the most matching keywords or the most similar wording pattern from a local database. Chatbots have been successfully used in industry as virtual customer service assistants, guides, alternative to FAQs etc. One such chatbot is A.L.I.C.E. (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) which uses Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML) to encode conversations. AIML is an XML-compliant language with a formal specification and W3C XML Schema. AIML contains elements to define patterns to match user inputs and the subsequent replies. WxGuru (Weather Guru) is a clone of A.L.I.C.E. designed as an educational chatbot for Atmospheric Science. WxGuru is unique because its conversational patterns have been coupled with a reasoner loaded with Atmospheric Ontology. This coupling allows WxGuru to provide useful and knowledgeable replies to user queries regarding any Atmospheric science questions. WxGuru design and implementation will be presented in this poster