Local businessmen use technology to teach foreign language.
By: Melinda Sherwood
It’s a phone, it’s a camera, it’s an address book and a calculator and one day, if two entrepreneurs have their way, that cell phone may even be able to teach you French.
Sheldon Sturges, a life-long educational consultant, and Roy Rosser, a patent agent with the intellectual property firm Synnestvedt Lechner & Woodbridge of Princeton and Philadelphia, are working together to develop a conversational robot that, among other things, could teach foreign languages.
Their ultimate goal: to get the product in the hands or cell phones of children and teenagers, specifically the millions learning English in Asia.
"I spent my life trying to figure out how kids can learn from the computer and new technologies, and I think this is a very serious idea that could work kids love cell phones and they’re fun," said Mr. Sturges, who spent 12 years with Scholastic Inc. in New York City and is founder of Princeton Future, the nonprofit civic organization that promotes a holistic approach to downtown planning.
He anticipates a fully functioning version of the product called Learning Streams within 18 months.
Mr. Rosser, a physicist whose virtual advertising patents cover the technology behind the yellow first-down line now widely used in televised pro-football games, has devoted two days a week for the past two years working on the coding for the project. He’s also had the good fortune of seeing some of the most advanced artificial intelligence programs out there.
Last year, he judged the world-renowned competition for the Loebner Prize, awarded to the designer of the most "human" computer system. The Loebner Prize was established 15 years ago in honor of the late great mathematician Alan Turing, who pioneered the concept of the digital computer. The contest attracts some of the world’s best robot makers.
That experience has helped Mr. Rosser and Mr. Sturges hone the Learning Streams technology. "We don’t want to re-invent the wheel," said Mr. Rosser. "But judging the best programs out there reaffirmed for me that, despite considerable progress, they are still a long way from being able to maintain a conversation. Radically new methods are needed, which is what Sheldon and I are working on."
The Learning Streams product now three pre-prototype engines that can answer "what" and "why" questions should ultimately be able to converse just as naturally as a human being, said Mr. Sturges.
"One of the key things we’re trying to get is responsiveness, and we think responsiveness in the robot will spur learning," said Mr. Sturges. "We’re trying to create a database that listens to the input, and that guides you with interesting metaphors into a further and deeper conversation that allows you to practice what you need to practice.
"If you can talk to a 13-year-old about music," he continued, "that person will pursue the conversation and learn more. Conversation has a lot of gaming in it and trying to get game-playing sensitivity into it is important."
Mr. Sturges sees Asia as the ideal market because of the large number of teenagers who not only study English, but adore their cell phones. If Learning Streams were offered through the cellular provider, he believes many would subscribe to it for about $1 or $2 a month.
"Particularly in China, getting ready for the Olympics in 2008, there’s a market there for a very low-cost, English-practicing subscription," said Mr. Sturges.
Mr. Sturges hopes to raise $10 million in capital so he can hire five full-time programmers and bring the product to market as soon as possible. He’s talking with several venture capital firms, and expects to receive $800,000 in funding from the U.S. government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Like the computer, the cell phone is a great tool for learning, as well as communication, Mr. Sturges concluded. "The cell phone is going to be a wonderful input device for serious computing," he says, "and that that device can become a wonderful learning device."
For more information on Learning Streams, contact Sturges Publishing Co., 37 Palmer Square, at (609) 921-6100.