CHAPTER ONE

INTODUCTION

1.1     Background of the Study

Today’s world computers play an important role in our society. Computers give us information; they entertain us and help us in lots of manners. A chatbot is a computer program designed to counterfeit a smart communication on a text or spoken ground. But this paper is based on the text only chatbot. Chatbot recognize the user input as well as by using pattern matching, access information to provide a predefined acknowledgment. For example, if the user is providing the bot a sentence like “What is your name?” The chatbot is most likely to reply something like “My name is Chatbot.” or the chatbot replies as “You can call me Chatbot.” based on the sentence given by the user. When the input is bringing into being in the database, a response from a predefined pattern is given to the user. A Chatbot is implemented using pattern comparing, in which the order of the sentence is recognized and a saved response pattern is acclimatize to the exclusive variables of the sentence. They cannot register and respond to complex questions, and are unable to perform compound activities. Chatbot is relatively a new technology. The application of a Chatbot can be seen in various fields in the future. This paper covers the techniques used to design and implement a Chatbot. Comparisons are made, findings are discussed and conclusion is drawn at the end (Badmit, 2004).

According to John (2015) a chatbot is an artificial intelligent agent that can participate in a conversation with a user using a natural language processing technique. Most are equipped with a messenger type interface with an input from a user and an output from the chatbot. The chatbot processes the users input and outputs a reply based on what the user has just sent. It could be a greeting, conversation topic, or an image. Most basic chatbots work by matching a users input with a predefined set of dialog. For example, a user saying “Thank you” will result in the chatbot saying “You’re Welcome”. The predefined set of dialogs can be set up to imitate a normal conversation between two people. Problems can arise when a user says something the chatbot does not recognize, an example could be the user meaning to say “Thank you”, but instead says “Thanks a lot”, this can confuse the chatbot as it will be looking to match the “Thank you” input with “Welcome”. This leads to a lot of manual work by trying to define every combination of a user saying “Thanks”. Modern chatbots are more complex and feature natural language processing that can learn from user inputs. They can access application interface to get information users such as news, weather, time etc. They can process orders and make bookings entirely through a chatbot interface. Chatbots are well suited for mobile devices as messaging is at the heart of a mobile phone.

 1.2    Statement of the Problem

Due to busy schedules of Head of Department, the Head of Department find it difficult passing information to students, students in return also find it difficult to interact with the Head of Department, especially to ask question and get ideas. Student and the Head of Department don't have any android Base application dedicated for getting information from the Department. Hence there is no system application interfaces that help as a substitute or alternative to face-to-face help. Student don’t have any means of getting information as professional help from the Department, they only depend on notice board and Head of Department.

1.3     Aim and Objectives of the Study

The aim of this project is to make a solution to the problem of repeatedly question ask by the student, direct communication between student and the Head of the Department and to reduce the cost of using bill on wall and notice board.

The main to objectives of the project are as follows:   

1. To develop a database where all the relevant information about questions, answers, keywords, logs and feedback will be stored.
2. To develop an android Base application which aims to give the ability to students to submit questions to the chatbot and get convincing replies.

1.4     Significance of the Study

1. The project will help in enhancing our knowledge about implementing of an android Base enquiry chatbot application for a particular department.
2. It will enable student to get direct access to information for academic related help.
3. This study also has its relevance in solving real life problems affecting students today like indecisions about student’s course of study, career choices and misinformation about the department.
4. This project help facilitate it users to save time and energy when they want to get information from Head Department.
5. Student can able to interact with the chatbot directly by asking the chatbot question about the department and the chatbot will able to responds to their concerns.

1.5     Scope of the Study

This research work covers the design and implementation of an android Base Chatbot that will serve as a medium of enquiry by the student.

1.6     Limitation of the Study

The researcher faced some limitations during the course of this research. Some of this limitations/constraint includes;

1. Time constraint: Time factor was the major factors as the timeframe to submit the project was too short for an extensive research.
2. Financial constraint:  Lack of adequate finance to fund the researcher as to visit many places was another major setback.

           1.7    Definition of Terms

1. Robot: Is a machine, especially one programmable by a computer that capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically.
2. Chat: Is the act of engaged in informal conversation by text or voice message in a real time through a computer network.
3. Student: A person seriously devoted enrolled to some subject academic in a school or other educational institution place under the guidance of an instructor.
4. Information: Knowledge obtains from investigation, study, or information.
5. Department:  A part of an organization such as school, business or government that deal with particular are of study or work.
6.  Institution: An organization founded for a religious, education, professional, or social purpose.
7.  Acclimatize: Act of adapt or conform oneself to new or different conditions.
8. Natural language (NL): A language that has developed naturally in use as Contrasted with an artificial language or computer code.
9. Natural language processing (NLP): A branch of artificial intelligence that deal with the interaction between computers and humans using the natural language.
10. Domain knowledge: Is knowledge about the environment which the target system operates.
11. Unidirectional interaction: Is an interaction in a single direction not     subject to change or reversal of direction.
12. Autonomous program: Are software entities that carry out some set of operations on behalf of a user or another program with some degree of independence or autonomy, and in so doing, employ some knowledge or representation of the user's goals or desires.
13. Artifact: Any object made by human being, especially with a view to Subsequent the use.