Mobile Arabchat: An Arabic Mobile-Based Conversational Agent

Abstract

The conversation automation/simulation between a user and machine evolved during the last years. A number of research-based systems known as conversational agents has been developed to address this challenge. A conversational Agent is a program that attempts to simulate conversations between the human and machine. Few of these programs targeted the mobile-based users to handle the conversations between them and a mobile device through an embodied spoken character. Wireless communication has been rapidly extended with the expansion of mobile services. Therefore, this paper discusses the proposing and developing a framework of a mobile-based conversational agent called Mobile ArabChat to handle the Arabic conversations between the Arab users and mobile device. To best of our knowledge, there are no such applications that address this challenge for Arab mobile-based users. An Android based application was developed in this paper, and it has been tested and evaluated in a large real environment. Evaluation results show that the Mobile ArabChat works properly, and there is a need for such a system for Arab users.