Voice – The New Keyboard!
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Tony Stark had Jarvis. But Jarvis was only an idea in a movie, as are most of these virtual assistants. Although the concept is initiated from a TV show, our Jarvis is real, and it is called the Collaborative Information Virtual Assistant or CIVA.
"CIVA, please start an incident report." That is all it takes to start collecting the data and filling out your report for the day while still in the field. CIVA is a virtual assistant that can do more than retrieve information for you like Amazon's Alexa or Google's Google Assistant. Using CIVA, you can complete project documents and field reports, receive notifications, and communicate with your team from anywhere - using only your voice.
Setting the Stage
Despite enormous improvements in technology and safety for construction managers and inspectors, more needed to be done with data-capture. With so many advancements in data analytics over the years, to lose even a little data was a missed opportunity to improve and become more efficient.
Voice-activated technology such as Alexa and Siri were in practically every household, making life easier and safer in some situations to capture requests and provide the user with information. Brett Brenize, Construction Management Business Line Leader of Gannett Fleming's Construction Services and Project Principal of CIVA, asked, "How can we use voice technology in the field to make construction management work more efficiently for data-capture?" At this point, Brett had the idea to create a voice-activated virtual assistant that captures data in the field using only your voice.
Brett sent his idea in for the Innovation Challenge at Gannett Fleming. In 2018, the judges felt it could become a reality with the support of GeoDecisions, Gannett Fleming's geospatial division, and awarded funding to develop the virtual assistant we now call CIVA.
Technology Behind the Scenes
CIVA, at its core, is the use of voice to complete work that previously could only be accomplished utilizing a keyboard. CIVA is a voice-activated, spatially enabled series of stored questions-and-answers data that integrates with other solutions via Webhooks. CIVA's technology is industry agnostic.
Using CIVA, an individual can complete a report using only their voice. A predefined library of reports can easily be created and modified by the user with the configuration files. While out on the job site, CIVA asks the individual each of the report’s questions and fills in the answers. Once approved, CIVA stores the responses, which are then passed on via webhooks to integrate with our partner systems including Esri® and Cityworks. Once back in the office, staff can review and edit the reports before submitting them.
“It is inspiring to see the way we are using the voice data to show analytics. Seeing a dashboard full of data that came from just our voice.”
CIVA is a unique combination of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Alexa, Webhook, and many workarounds. Presently, CIVA can work with any platform to display the information, including Esri and most document management systems. The surveys, unique to each client, are created by the GeoDecisions team with branching questions. "We're pushing the boundaries of the Alexa technology. It wasn't designed for dynamic branching questions like the ones we've built," said Chris Hale, Senior Developer at GeoDecisions and CIVA Lead Developer. "We've set up a system where we can quickly build surveys and send the data to any endpoint that the client desires in a matter of minutes." CIVA takes the voice data, processes it, and makes it available via Webhooks, which then serve it up through other formats – dashboards, excel spreadsheets, pdfs, and more.
Using an existing voice-activated technology like Alexa allowed the team to complete this product in less than a year. Alexa handles all the variations in dialect and speech that could occur when new users begin to use CIVA.
Challenges Facing the Actors
One of the biggest challenges the team overcame was dealing with questions and answers that were not predefined. Hale said, "There was a lot of trial and error since this had never been done before. And if it was, no one was talking about it."
Another constraint was the eight-second response limits by Alexa. Our team developed a workaround. After the eight seconds is over, CIVA asks if you want to add any additional information. If you say yes, you get another eight seconds, and it will continue until you say no. All eight-second intervals are put together as one response in the final report.
The team did need to add to Alexa's synonym logs for unique words to the industry that were not always correctly interpreted. Voice recognition technology is continuously evolving and improving but dealing with its "growing pains" is a constant challenge. The team is regularly combing through logs to find what Alexa hears and building synonym lists to align those phrases with the desired outputs.
One of the first clients led the team to develop another modification. CIVA was designed to complete a report entry in a short amount of time, 2 to 5 minutes in many cases – start report, answer questions, confirm answers, and save. This client had one massive report due at the end of each day. To fix this, the team arranged to hold multiple reports in memory. The client opens an initial, primary report at the beginning of the day, adding supplemental reports throughout the day. At the end of the day, everything is compiled into one single report.
The Sequels
The future of CIVA looks bright because it was built on a successful framework. Jamie Christensen, Gannett Fleming's Innovation Director and Development Manager of CIVA, stated, "You need two things to make a project like this a success. First, you need a champion for the innovation at the leadership level and the day-to-day management level, and CIVA has that. Second, you need the perseverance to make it through the milestones, which the CIVA team has accomplished."
Ultimately, CIVA will partner well with most solutions available in the marketplace today. We see a future where you will be offered the choice of a keyboard and mouse or CIVA to accomplish your tasks.
As we work with different clients, new ideas and challenges will occur, but that makes innovation so much fun.
"CIVA, end report."
