The VISTA Project

An interesting piece of research was undertaken to create a virtual assistant (represented by a speaking avatar) for delivering the functions and contents of an electronic programmes guide (EPG) via speech. This research looked into manipulating the EPG (such as changing TV channels and enquiring about the times of a specific TV show) by the means of spoken commands from the viewer and responses from the virtual assistant, targeted at the Visually Impaired and the elderly.

Here's the link to a pdf of the VISTA project paper. The paper dates back to 2003 and it would be interesting to see if anything's been done in this field since then. The hot stuff comes in the Future Improvements part of the paper, concluding that more work would be needed to achieve a more personable virtual assistant, flexible dialogues and, ultimately, to meet the needs of diverse users.