Amazon has just announced the winners of the Alexa Prize TaskBot Challenge 2, and the result couldn't be more encouraging, as the first place was won by the team from the Department of Informatics/NOVA LINCS of the Faculty of Science and Technology of NOVA University Lisbon.
The competition, which has a cash prize of 500,000 dollars (circa 475 000 euros), rewards university teams from around the world that develop solutions to one of the most challenging problems in conversational artificial intelligence (AI): creating conversational AI experiences that respond to users' ever-changing needs while performing complex tasks.
The expectation is that TaskBot, Alexa's conversational agent - the virtual assistant developed by Amazon - will be able to communicate effectively and guide the user through manual tasks, from cooking to making origami. This year, the competing teams were challenged to find solutions that incorporated more visuals into each conversation.
The NOVA FCT team, known as "TWIZ", developed a solution that works on two fronts, integrating voice and video. For example, the agent can teach a user how to perform a complex manual task, such as cooking, painting, arranging objects, etc., and even dialogue in detail about the instructions with video support.
Read more on the NOVA FCT website.