GURIBO: Chatterbot para auxílio à Secretaria Acadêmica do campus Alegrete

Abstract

The advancement of computer science and artificial intelligence, as well as the development of machines and algorithms that are increasingly more capable of mimicking human beings, made the execution of tasks previously solely done by humans, such as customer service, possible. These tools have been becoming to an increasing extent more common. This type of task is usually performed by chatterbots, the use of this type of virtual agent, allows to facilitate and standardize the access to information by the user, between performing much more complex tasks depending on its purpose. At Universidade Federal do Pampa (Unipampa) the academic department has several roles, one of which is student services. Many are the demands coming from that demographic, such as: school record emission, diverse attests requests, internship terms and contracts, admissions, licenses, among others. Furthermore, students utilize the department as one of the first options to solve any doubts amidst the academic realm. Given its great demand, the sector ends up getting overloaded, since there is little information for an automatic response to be generated for the students. This work presents the study and development of a chatterbot with the purpose of assisting the university’s academic department demands, in the respect of students questions about internships, utilizing different technologies such as the Rasa tool, which was used to create this chatterbot. For the final development of the tool, requirements were raised with Unipampa students and with those responsible for the university’s academic department. Finally, an assessment of the technology’s acceptance was conducted with students, showing that they would like to use this type of tool to resolve doubts quickly and at any time. Additionally, the tool was presented to two people who work directly with the subject of internships at the university, and improvements and several contributions to be implemented in the future were listed. Key-words: Chatterbot; Artificial Intelligence; Internships.