Smart Assistance through a Smartphone: The Next Talk of the Town!
The world is getting smart with each passing day. We are living in a smart era and to keep updated ourselves with the recent advancements in technology is an essential element of our lives today. On these lines, do you know what’s the next talk of the town? The season of virtual personal assistants using IoT-powered mobile applications is here. Unless you are a zombie, you have probably seen or used Google Allo, Siri, Amazon Alexa, etc. What are they? How do they work? From where does IoT enter into the scenario? We are going to answer all of these questions in this blog. So get ready for a virtual roller-coaster ride and we assure you that you will end up toppling about the facts you will encounter throughout this ride. Let’s begin.
What is a Virtual Personal Assistant?
A Virtual Personal Assistant (VPA) is a software agent that can provide services for an individual based on commands given or questions asked by the users. Frequently, the term chatbot is also used to refer to virtual personal assistants, powered by Artificial Intelligence.
Different Ways of Interaction
Text: Online chat as in the case of several instant messaging apps such as Swiggy, Flipkart, Myntra, etc. Other forms include SMS text and Email.
Voice: Natural Language Processing (NLP) is used for matching voice inputs to execute commands. Sometimes, a wake word might be used to activate a virtual assistant such as "Hey Siri" or "OK Google".
Images: Users can also interact with the assistant by uploading images.
IoT App Development getting along with Virtual personal Assistants
Selecting a perfect gift on the birthdays or wedding anniversaries of our beloved ones is too difficult today. Guess what? Your virtual personal assistant can do that for you. Even one of the hottest gift ideas in this season is virtual assistants with a voice-enabled user interface. These assistants are very handy devices, and they are becoming increasingly popular in our daily lives.
But what empowers these virtual personal assistants. There has been a lot of research going around as to what tech can be employed to improve virtual assistance. It turns out that IoT app development extends an enormous amount of possibilities to realize the true digitization in personal assistance. Let’s explore how it is possible in this section.
Bringing Connectivity on the Table
The integration of IoT app development into virtual personal assistants has blurred the line between home and the vehicles parked in the garage. With the logical extension of the IoT infrastructure, you can start the car, lock/unlock the doors, turn on the AC or adjust the temperature while sitting in the living room and sipping a cup of coffee. Wouldn’t that be fantastic?
Enhancing Coordination among IoT Devices
Controlling the devices remotely with the NLP interpretation by the virtual assistants in the smartphone or smart speakers significantly improves the coordination among smart devices. Just imagine what if your alarm clock instructs your AC to switch ON before you come back from working on a sweaty sunny day. Ah! So great.
Improving Accessibility Options for Impaired Ones
Have you thought about the relief experienced by the disabled and elder people through these virtual personal assistants? IoT apps are empowering these assistants in the way they work. For instance, they can set reminders about medication intake and place an emergency call to help disabled people in the case of an accident.
Not Online Commerce Anymore! It’s Voice Commerce now.
The online stores are trying their best to provide their users with a touch of a human figure to virtually help them during shopping. Alas! It doesn’t come full circle because digital virtual shopping lacks interaction and communication with the customers. So here come AI-powered chatbots to the rescue.
Zeroing Down the Touchscreen Independence
A number of activities ranging from registration to login to the payment can be done over the voice now. A user’s voice is going to be the next fuel of biometric authentication which makes the crucial credentials secure. Also, this form of authentication will end the need for keeping the debit/credit cards always in the pocket.
What can VPAs do for you?
Virtual Personal Assistants can perform a wide variety of tasks. Let’s have a look over some of them:
- Providing useful insights such as weather forecast, facts from Wikipedia, setting an alarm, making notes, and to-do lists.
- Playing music from streaming services such as Spotify and Jio Saavn, playing various radio stations, even reading books on Kindle.
- Playing videos and movies on televisions. Ex: Amazon Fire TV Stick. Streaming TV shows on Netflix.
- Placing orders on e-commerce websites. For example, Flipkart, Myntra, Amazon.
- Assisting interactions of the common people with the government.
- Complementing and replacing customer service by humans.
The Darlings of the Customers
If you have found yourself connected to the things we talked about in this blog, now is the time to expose yourself to the smart world. Enter this digital era with a game-on face and there will be no stepping back, we promise. Following is a list of most popular virtual personal assistants on which you can try your hands on:
- Google Allo
- Apple Siri
- Amazon Alexa
- Microsoft Cortana
- Amazon Echo
- Samsung Bixby
- Facebook M
