Platform for the creation of cross-platform voice applications

Abstract

Due to the growth in the usage of digital assistants there was a need to expand their functionalities in order to cater to a wider range of users and their necessities. This need led to the creation of voice applications. Voice applications are still relatively new and as such there are still not that many tools, established architectural patterns or even a standard methodology that can be used in the development process. This problem is even bigger if we are addressing cross-platform appli- cations, given that there is nowadays a plethora of different vendors of integrated digital assistants. The lack of a standardized methodology means that the developers will end up using the methodology(ies) that seems the most adequate concerning the purpose of obtaining a stable product. With this in mind, a research about the different application models for voice applications was conducted. This research led to the creation of a platform, with an incorporated visual editor, that promotes a platform-independent development process of cross-platform voice ap- plications and its automatization. This platform allows a developer to create a language model template that will later be used to generate platform-specific models to define the frontend and boilerplate code to develop the backend functionality. By using this platform, the developers will be able to create and deploy voice applications for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant from a single source of information despite the differences in their application models and, most important, resorting primarily to the intended requirements and not only to technological aspects.