Lincoln Tourism Chatbot

Jan - May 2016

A chatbot which uses Skype to give tourism information to people visiting Lincoln. It is written in C# using Windows Forms and was submitted for the Group Project module for Computer Science at the University of Lincoln.

The bot can give the following information:

• Directions to local landmarks, such as the Cathedral and Castle
• Information about local bars, restaurants, clubs, places to stay, etc.
• Opening times and directions (using Google API)

The bot uses AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) to process the input and generate a response. The main goal of the project was to make an AI which seemed real, so features such as a delay depending on the length of reply and spelling correction were added.

Installation

To use the bot, you will need Visual Studio and at least 2 different Skype accounts. Launch the sln file, run the program and login with your Skype credentials. You may need to login with an "old type" Skype account (one with a username and password) instead of a Microsoft account. Once logged in, the bot will automatically respond to any incoming messages.

Dependencies

The project requires a few DLL files and AIML files which are included in the project.

• AIMLbot.dll - For processing the AIML files - available on SourceForge (Source is slightly modified to allow additional features)
• Skype4Sharp.dll - For communication with Skype - see the GitHub repo
• Newtonsoft.Json.dll - Needed by Skype DLL
• AIML and config files (in aiml\ and config\) - Holds the chatbot responses and config info

Old Version

Since submission the method used to connect to Skype was broken. To see the submitted version, see the Skype4COM branch, although you will need an old version of the Skype client.

Team Members

• Callum Dixon
• Charlie Volland-Butler
• Jacob Ellis
• James Middleton
• Neville King
• Nikita Dmitriev
• Toby Field
• Tom Garton