Mobile phones
Mobile phones offer AR, voice interaction, and a web service client.
When the user uses the AR-QAS to read an advertising flyer,
the mobile phone can present a 3D object that speaks (e.g., a narrator)
based on an AR technique. The user can touch the narrator
on the screen and pose a question. The narrator can then answer
the question through speech based on text-to-speech technology.
The functions of AR, voice interaction, and a web service client
are presented in the following sections.
3.1.1.1. Augmented reality. This study uses Qualcomm Augmented
Reality (QCAR) developed by Qualcomm to design and implement
an AR technique. A mobile phone camera can capture the image of
an advertising flyer and return the image as a 3D object through
QCAR Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), which are used
for cyber-physical service. The user can then interact with the
advertising flyer through his mobile phone.
3.1.1.2. Voice interaction. AR-QASs can provide real-time QAS
through voice interaction (e.g., SIRI by Apple Inc.). However,
because of limited resources in a mobile phone, the question classification
is generated in a cloud server. Therefore, mobile phones
can support speech recognition and text-to-speech. A mobile
phone can collect a user’s speech via the microphone and connect
with the Google speech recognition API to generate the corresponding
text. The mobile phone can then send this text to the
cloud server and the cloud server responds with an answer after
analyzing the user’s query. Finally, the mobile phone can use the
text-to-speech technology and present responses to users by voice.
3.1.1.3. Web service client. Mobile phones provide a web service
client based on RESTful services. A mobile phone can then deliver
the message to a cloud server via RESTful services.