Arnold Depickere

Development of humanoid and dance robots has improved greatly due to rapid advancement of electronics, computer, mechatronics and control technologies. While humanoid robots such as Honda ASIMO, Fujita HOAP-3 and Sony QRIO have dazed the public with their amazing capabilities, such robots are in very limited supply and they are also extremely expensive. On the other hand, the low cost toy robot, WowWee's Robosapien (RS), has become very popular. It has also expanded its functionalities in later models since its line of products were first launched in 2004. The most important aspect of such robot is its cost is only a fraction of the highly sophisticated robots. This study investigates the feasibility of using low cost robots such as RS for the purposes of entertainment and teaching Thai dances. Informal feedbacks and comments have shown a high degree of acceptance and keen interest. This demonstrates the potential of low cost robots for training, entertainment and edutainment purposes.

Success of digital ecosystem depends on a reliable supporting infrastructure that offers and transports services and information thereby empowers the business system to function properly. This implies the utmost importance to maintain the reliability, confidentiality and integrity of the network and communication systems. This paper reports an initial pilot study on the use of a simulation game called CyberCIEGE for raising the awareness and knowledge on Information Security among a small group of Thai students. The paper provides an overview of the software, the experiment and results, and, a discussion on the next phase of this proposed project

Universities teach project management to information technology (IT) students. The project management principles that students previously have learned often are put into practice in a project course that is intended to give final-year students the experience of applying their knowledge to real or simulated projects. This article reports on research that investigated the use and usefulness of project management in student IT projects. The results show that there was a wide range in the application of project management practices, with students being more likely to produce the initial documentation associated with some of the project management knowledge areas than to make use of it throughout the project to monitor the project’s progress. The results also showed that the number of project management guidelines applied in student projects was not linked to IT project success. However, there was a strong relationship between project management plan quality and obtaining a good software product.

The availability of multiple media channels through the Internet has added new dimensions of communication between people or communities who are geographically separated. In the environment of informal communication on the Internet, chat applications are popular in which a user may be represented only by a nickname or an alias. This suggests that a person may be able to communicate more freely when his or her identity is concealed. Popular chatting or instant messaging (IM) systems such as Microsoft MSN Messenger, America Online's Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and GoogleTalk have changed the way that a user may communicate with friends, acquaintances, and business colleagues. Once limited to desktop personal computers (PCs) or laptops, popular instant messaging systems are finding their way onto handheld devices and mobile phones. This allows a user to chat from virtually anywhere. Nowadays, IM is found on almost every personal PC connected to the Internet as well as on many corporate desktops.

In this paper, we examine the use of knowledge query technology as applied to conversation bots in the instant messaging environment. Hence, we designed an artificial intelligent conversation robot or bots called Artificial Intelligence Natural language Identity (hereafter, AINI) to mimic human conversation. Our goal is to introduce a Domain Matrix Knowledge Model and an Automated Knowledge Extraction Agent (AKEA) to create AINI's knowledge bases, and in turn provide intelligent query mechanisms. We report an evaluation on the collection and analysis of a corpus containing over 3280 utterances in a series of real instant messages exchanged between the AINI conversation bot and 65 online buddies. About 1721 utterances were produced by AINI, 88.03% were from open-domain knowledge, 2.15% from domain-specific knowledge base and 9.82% were inappropriate and amusing responses. These results show that domain knowledge plays significant roles in conversations between two or more human users and in human-machine conversation.

In this paper, we propose a domain metric knowledge model for Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) for human computer interaction. In our research, we have found that by incorporating Open-Domain and Domain-Specific knowledge, a new generation of ECAs will be able to demonstrate intelligence and to increase trust by the users. The proposed system is aimed at advancing the scholarly field of artificial intelligence and to offer assistance to queries on real-world issues. The experimental system we have developed aims to provide answers to questions on pandemic threat. The focus is on Bird Flu as the Domain-Specific knowledge together with the support of multiple open-domain knowledge bases. We also present a scheme for selecting specific websites as the input knowledge bases for our conversational system based on reputability, creditability, reliability and trustworthiness.

The main aim of this research is to investigate a novel technique for implementing a conversational intelligent agent system on the web. The research will focus on a multilevel natural language query approach. While the present World Wide Web provides a distributed hypermedia interface to the vast amount of information on the Internet, there is a lack of appropriate metadata to that content. Instead of being a giant library as intended, increasing sections of the Web resemble a giant garbage dump. A multilevel natural language query system is described in this paper for the representation of knowledge in specific and open domains. The six-layer conversational agent system includes Spellcheck, Natural Language Understanding and Reasoning, FAQChat, Metadata Index Search, Pattern Matching and Case-Based Reasoning, and Supervised Learning. This technique is demonstrated using extracts from queries on the field of data relating to the Bird Flu H5N1 pandemic crisis.

Search engine is one of the reasons for e-commerce success in today's world. They are playing an important role in supplying both international and local communities with various dimensions of business information for the customers and other interested parties. In Thailand, two of the most popular and successful Thai search engines are Sanook.com and Hunsa.com at httv://www.sanook.com and httv://www.hunsa. com respectively. This study aims to analyse their business strategies and models including related aspects through a qualitative approach. The study was based on interviews with the CEO or CIO of the companies and individuals who have particular interests in search engines and assessment of the Websites. The research outcomes cover the search engine companies' background, business strategies and models; industry, competitors and environmental analysis; key business drivers and threats. The study also covers innovation factors and adoption including Website assessment through evaluation of the search engines and their future development.

In 2002, the Thai government has endorsed an information technology policy framework entitled Thailand Vision towards a Knowledge-Based Economy (IT 2010). The policy emphasises the roles of information technology for the enablement and facilitation of economic and social development. One of the objectives is to develop the ability of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to compete in the world market. Although there are successful cases, majority of the companies among the Thai SMEs sector are still in an early stage of utilising e-commerce technologies to reap benefits from new opportunities. Therefore, there is a need to understand, to extract and to acquire knowledge about the adoption and use of the e-commerce technologies by SMEs in Thailand. Technology acceptance model (TAM) has been applied to many studies on the adoption and use of innovation and technologies. This proposed study intends to use a modified TAM named TECTAM (Thai E-commerce Technology Acceptance Model), as a research tool and model to study e-commerce acceptance among the Thailand's SMEs sector. The predominant dimensions of this study are based on TAM perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU). In terms of PU, the near-term and long-term usefulness are considered. On the other hand, the PEOU will be concerned with the social influence processes and the cognitive instrumental processes. In addition, this study will investigate how to increase the benefits from the relationship between TAM and other approaches. Finally, the study aims to apply the use of TECTAM model in terms of e-commerce technologies acceptance and how they could be used While the project is in a preliminary stage, the paper will detail the proposed methodology and approach of this project.