Intelligent Personal Assistants

This book provides an overview of the current research in the interdisciplinary area of personal assistants (PA) and cognitively inspired systems.
It discusses the most relevant topics in this highly diversified domain, like reasoning, health, personalization, robotics, and ethical and social issues. Personal assistants (PA) are a relatively new concept directed at people with cognitive or physical disabilities, and is expanding to include complex platforms such as sensors, actuators, monitoring abilities and decision processes.

This book examines the applications of intelligent virtual assistants (IVAs) in different areas and presents a clear vision of how this new technology can be used in current and future activities. Chapters cover such topics as the scientific development of VA technology, generating voices for IVAs, the ethics of using IVAs, and using IVAs in banking and finance.

"The more we know about smart and intelligent systems and their use, the more productive organizations can become, and the more quality of life will improve."—Gavriel Salvendy, President Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine of Florida, University Distinguished Professor University of Central Florida"