Chicago Assistant

The Chicago Assistant is a text and voice interface for requesting and inquiring about city services. Functionalities we are currently exploring include:

• Submit 311 Service Requests
• Get transit arrival times and station accessibility information
• Request information about common city services such as getting a vehicle city sticker, school closures, street cleaning schedules, etc.
• Contacting your alderman
• Got an idea? Share it with us!

The text and voice interface will be accessible via SMS, popular messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger and voice interfaces like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

The project aims to improve ease of accessibility to city services and information about city services by creating a text and voice channel, complimenting existing web and telephone (311) channels.

Depricated Prototype: http://chicago-assistant-depricated.herokuapp.com/

Current Functionality in Development

• Submit 311 Requests

Join Us on Tuesdays at Chi Hack Night

[]Slack Channel](https://chihacknight.slack.com/) #chivirtualassistant

Collaborative Tools

Google Drive
Trello Board

Join Us

• Chi Hack Night Slack Channel: #chivirtualassistant
• Trello Board
• Google Drive

Learning to Build Conversation Interfaces

The learning curve for building conversational interfaces can be a steep. We have been curating a Get Started document that covers our groups mission in addition to pointing you to helpful resources for learning about conversational interfaces.

Helpful Learning Resources

• Read - Rasa Documentation
• Watch - Helpful Technical Video
• Listen - DataFramed Podcast Interview with Rasa Founder

Getting Started

Admittedly, installing everything you need to run the project locally can be a little difficult. If you want to be brave and install everything within a virtual environment on your local machine, you can follow Rasa's Installation Instructions

If you want to bypass that pain, I invite you to use the Docker image we've built, assuming you are familiar with Docker or want to be! If you decide to install from scratch, you can skip the Docker instructions.

Getting Started with Docker [MacOS]

Install Docker
brew cask install docker

Once it's done installing, open up the application Launcher and start Docker. You'll be prompted for your password to complete the installation.

At this time, there is no need to create a Docker ID if you don't have one.

Clone Repository

Open up a Terminal and navigate to a folder where you maintain your projects. In my case, I keep my projects in a Projects folder within my home directory.

To clone the repository, run

git clone --single-branch -b get-started https://github.com/ChicagoAssistant/chicago-assistant.git

If you already have the repository cloned to your computer, copy the get-started repo to your machine by running

git checkout --track origin/get-started

Create Your Own Branch

Create your own branch by running (NOTE: do not use the brackets):

git branch [yourname]-dev

Switch to your newly created branch:

git checkout [yourname]-dev

Add everything and push your changes:

git add .
git commit -m"initial commit"
git push

Build Docker Image (Alternative Below)

Now, we're going to build the Docker Image. This make take around 10 minutes to complete.

docker build -t chicago-assistant .

Once complete, you should be all set to start building a Chicago Assistant functionality! Before we get there, though, let's see exactly how that would happen.

Alternative to Building Docker Image

1. Create a Docker ID.

2. Get added to the Chicago Assistant Team on Docker. Ask Vidal to add you by giving him your Docker ID username.

3. Login using docker login -u [username] -p

4. Run docker pull chicagoassistant/chicago-assistant

Starting Up the Container

You can start our virtual container environment by running:

docker run --rm --name chicago-assistant -it -v [path for repo]:/chicago-assistant chicago-assistant bash

Make sure to replace [path for repo] with the full path of your local repository for this project. So, in my case, my full path would be

docker run --rm --name chicago-assistant -it -v /Users/vanguiano/Projects/chicago-assistant:/chicago-assistant chicago-assistant bash

You'll know you've successfully started up the virtual container when you see:

root@[somenum_letters]:/#

Finally, you should navigate to your project repository by running:

cd chicago-assistant

Training the Models

You can train the NLU and core functions of our project by running the following:

make train-nlu

make train-core

Running these commands should create a new folder in your repo called models.

Chatting with the Bot

To chat with the newly trained bot, you can run:

make run-cmdline

and after a few seconds you should see (Ignore the warnings):

WARNING  py.warnings  - /usr/local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/pykwalify/core.py:99: UnsafeLoaderWarning:
The default 'Loader' for 'load(stream)' without further arguments can be unsafe.
Use 'load(stream, Loader=ruamel.yaml.Loader)' explicitly if that is OK.
Alternatively include the following in your code:

  import warnings
  warnings.simplefilter('ignore', ruamel.yaml.error.UnsafeLoaderWarning)

In most other cases you should consider using 'safe_load(stream)'
  data = yaml.load(stream)

Bot loaded. Type a message and press enter: ```

Try talking to it!

You can exit the chat by hitting **CNTL + C**. Finally, you can exit the created container by typing `exit`.