PyBot

Inspiration

Knowing the possibilities of VR, we decided to combine a user experience (i.e. a chatbot) with it so that people could emulate real life interactions. If applied correctly, the possibilities of this application are immense. It could be used for the advancement of medicine, the increase of general knowledge within the public, and the bettering of society.

What it does

PyBot is a chatbot that is able to have a semi-open dialogue with the user inside virtual reality.

How we built it

The development of PyBot involved a three step process.

First, we took speech input from the user using the speech_recognition module. Then, after connecting to the OpenAI API, the Davinci engine generated a response to the user's prompt. Finally, the program narrated back the response by using pyttsx3.

After the successful completion of the chatbot, we linked it to a Tkinter GUI so that we could accurately start the program. Using the app developed in Unreal Engine, we were able to get responses from the chatbot.

Challenges we ran into

The original library we were using for speech recognition was outdated and involved much setup. We were also new to chatbots and the usage of API's. Creating the virtual environment was also a challenge as we had to learn Unreal Engine in a short span of time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud that we were able to pull off PyBot, a virtual reality chatbot, within 24 hours along with it being our first hackathon.

What we learned

Never to use Chatterbot (the library), and give up. Halfway through the hackathon we didn't have a single line of code written because we were unable to install a module that was important to our project. By persisting through this we were able to complete it on time and we also gained a variety of skills, including : time management, team work, and PYTHON.

What's next for PyBot

The next thing for PyBot is to make more figures that the user can select and make a login screen for the VR app. We would also train the speech module to prevent future inconsistencies.