Web Communication Protocols for Coordinating the Modules of AnHitz, a Basque-Speaking Virtual 3D Expert on Science and Technology

AnHitz is a prototype of a virtual Basque-speaking 3D expert that can answer questions or perform cross-lingual searches on science and technology, and show the search results in Basque by means of machine translation. It has been named after the 3-year strategic research project on language, speech and visual technologies for Basque carried out by several organizations, and built as a demonstrator of the technologies developed. Because the six modules comprising AnHitz have been implemented by different organizations using different operating systems, programming languages or libraries, it was impossible to build the demonstrator in a single executable or machine. As a result, the prototype has been constructed using separate programs in various machines that interact using network communication and web services protocols. Despite the employed approach having some drawbacks –mainly higher time delays when audio rendering is done via the web–, the outcome is indeed satisfactory, as it has allowed us to build a fully functional demonstrator that has showed good performance and acceptance in an evaluation made with 50 users, and has made a great impact on the Basque media.