iPhone Application “Kyo-no Hanna” Just Released:Personal Kyoto Tour Guide in Your Pocket

March 26, 2012

The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, (NICT, President: Dr. Hideo Miyahara) has released "Kyo-no Hanna", a personal Kyoto tour guide in English, on March 25th, 2012. The application is available from the App Store for free.

Background

NICT has been conducting research and development of spoken dialogue processing technology which aims users to get information via “ voice ” commands without any special knowledge of digital devices.

Alongside, NICT has also been promoting research and development of language portability technology. By this technology, multi-lingual input and output to the system is to be realized.

Achievements

"Kyo-no Hanna" on iPhone uses spoken dialogue processing technology developed by NICT and users can search travel information of Kyoto by voice commands. The database created by analyzing and modeling actual dialogue samples from professional tour guides, allows them to have natural conversations with your iPhone, and can access the right information in needed.

NICT’s latest research outcome, language portability technology produced “Kyo-no Hanna”, an English version of "AssisTra" (a Kyoto travel guide system, previously released in 2011). With “Kyo-no Hanna,“ your own personal tour guide, downloaded on iPhone, tourists from overseas can travel around Kyoto without difficulties, instead of carring heavy books and maps, or queuing in front of tourist information counters.

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The application will be available in the App Store until the end of March, 2013.

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The App Store is a digital application distribution platform for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch developed and maintained by Apple Inc. It requires 3G or Wi-Fi connection.

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iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

Appendix

○How To Install Software

“Kyo-no Hanna” Icon

Search "Kyo-no Hanna" in the App Store.

○Features of "Kyo-no Hanna" －Search travel information by speech dialogue－

A character named "Kyo-no Hanna" is going to be your tour guide. Just talk to her, and she will talk back.

Available in English only.

Please use "AssisTra (Hanna no Guide)" for Japanese.→ See【Reference】below.

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The customer is responsible for any communication fees resulting from the use of this application. Please be aware that international roaming fees may be expensive.

【Reference】