Friday January 15, 7:46 am Eastern Time
Company Press Release
FOODLINE Calls on Unisys to Deliver First-Ever Telephone Restaurant Suggestion-and-Selection Service Using Speech Technology
Unisys Natural Language Understanding technology allows consumers to have a conversation with computerized restaurant guide
BLUE BELL, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 15, 1999-- Unisys Corporation Friday announced that FOODLINE LLC is using Unisys Natural Language Understanding technology to create a revolutionary new telephone-based restaurant suggestion-and-selection service.
Callers can now get on-demand information on local restaurants by speaking via telephone to a computer application that actually understands spoken requests and delivers the precise information desired, just as a live person would.
Just launched in the Boston area, and in New York City by summer, FOODLINE will match restaurant-goers with venues that satisfy a particular mood, occasion or craving.
By simply dialing a local number and talking to ''Chef Bob'' in their own voice, callers can search by type of cuisine, location, price range, and special features, including more than 30 categories such as view, wine list, brunch and ''people watching.''
Callers can also listen to Zagat Survey reviews, have their calls transferred directly to a chosen restaurant, and have menus faxed to them. FOODLINE plans to branch out to most major U.S. cities within two years.
''Unisys Natural Language Understanding was a crucial technology in making FOODLINE effective and exciting,'' said Paul Lightfoot, President and CEO of FOODLINE. ''Consumers are tired of the touch-tone applications with endless menu options, and the Unisys Natural Language products allow us to offer consumers a service to retrieve valuable restaurant information while using an interface that is most natural to them -- their own voice.''
In addition to the FOODLINE service, Unisys Natural Language Understanding technology is being used in a variety of applications. For example, Moss Rehabilitation Center in Philadelphia and Unisys have created a system to help victims of aphasia (those who have lost the ability to construct complete sentences due to stroke or other brain injury) to regain their speaking skills.
The technology is also being tested in applications teaching English as a second language and in customer service call centers.
Speeding Market Development
Previously, creating an application like FOODLINE's was a costly and complex undertaking requiring specialized skills and a lengthy development period. Similar applications have taken teams of linguists and computer programmers years of effort and millions of dollars to develop.
Unisys tools and technology have eliminated the knowledge- and cost-barriers to developing mass-market speech-based applications. Now, any programmer familiar with creating today's touch-tone applications can easily create sophisticated speech-based applications that can interact with a caller in a natural manner. The days of frustrating ''press 1 for sales'' telephone calls are numbered.
Unisys Natural Language: How It Works
Unisys Natural Language technology enables companies to create telephone-based applications with a more natural ''listen and feel.'' With a touch-tone interface, a restaurant FOODLINE would be limited to prompting callers to press No. 1 for Italian, No.2 for Seafood and No. 3 for Chinese.
With a natural speech interface, you can tell the system ''I would like an Italian restaurant in North Boston,'' or ''Italian, please,'' or ''a good seafood place.'' The Unisys technology analyzes the speech, which has been digitized into text by the system, to determine the meaning and variable choices.
The intelligence of the technology can automatically perform powerful variable processing to handle phrases such as ''next Friday'', ''tomorrow'', ''today'' for dates or ''100 dollars'', ''100 bucks'', or ''100 francs'' for monetary amounts.
The Natural Language Speech Assistant
The Unisys Natural Language Speech Assistant (NLSA), an advanced speech application design and development tool set, is platform- and speech recognizer-independent.
Part of the Unisys Natural Language Understanding suite of products, the Unisys NLSA includes speech application simulation, application project management, development methodology, grammar generation and run-time interpretation.
This gives developers a standard tool to create spoken language applications across platforms and speech recognizers, protecting their applications from obsolescence.
About FOODLINE
Established in 1998, FOODLINE LLC is a Delaware limited liability company founded by Paul Lightfoot, a former Wall Street attorney, and Bob ''Chef Bob'' Thomas, a formally trained New York City chef.
The automated FOODLINE restaurant suggestion-and-selection service is available on both the Web and the telephone. The service is available free both to callers and to listed restaurants. Telephone service for Boston-area restaurants can be reached at 617/588-MENU, and the Internet service can be reached at foodline.com.
The service for restaurants in the New York City area is planned for launch in late Spring of 1999.
About Unisys
Unisys (NYSE:UIS - news) is more than 33,000 employees helping customers in 100 countries apply information technology to solve their business problems.
Unisys solutions are based on a broad portfolio of global information services including systems integration, outsourcing, ''repeatable'' application solutions, consulting, network integration, remote network management, and multivendor maintenance and support, coupled with enterprise-class servers and associated middleware, software and storage.
Repeatable solutions are focused on key vertical markets including financial services, transportation, telecommunications, government, publishing and other commercial markets. Headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, in the Greater Philadelphia area, Unisys 1997 annual revenue was $6.6 billion. Access the Unisys home page on the World Wide Web - unisys.com - for further information.
Unisys is a registered trademark of Unisys Corporation. All other brands and products referenced herein are acknowledged to be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. |
