Fancy an electronic helper through life?

The real Sandy (right) with her virtual counterpart

By Maggie Shiels for BBC News Online in Silicon Valley

Technology is all very well, but how much of it actually makes your life easier? An e-assistant which uses whoever's face you wanted - even the Bard himself - could do just that. But is the whole idea of robots just a mirage?

Inside a nondescript squat brick building that is home to Sprint's Advanced Technology Lab, a team of engineers, scientists and technologists is busy devising what it hopes might become the virtual future.

It'll recognise what the weather is going to be like and say, 'It's going to rain - bring the umbrella

Frank De Nap

And at the centre of operations is something called an "e-assistant".

The company bills the invention as "an intelligent agent that acts as a virtual personal assistant to help you sort through the junk mail of life".

For the busy exec getting ready for work, the lab's director Frank De Nap says the e-assistant is all about making things that bit easier.

Forewarned is forearmed

"In the morning you'd like to have something that as an entity will fetch your e-mail, tell you about your appointments and remind you of the files to bring to work, recognise what the weather is going to be like and say, 'Hey! - it's going to rain today. Bring the umbrella.'

"It will tell you about accidents on your route to work and suggest alternatives. In many ways some of us have the basis for an e-assistant. I have one today who's called Martha and who is my secretary. But how many of us have secretaries in our daily life?"

Frank De Nap: It may sound whacky today

In reality, the e-assistant is an amalgam of various existing technologies ranging from voice recognition to face recognition. To make it all seem more human, the team has given the e-assistant a personality, a face and a name - e-Sandy.

There's even a dash of humour as she explains: "I am a fully animated linguistic entity. I was created at Sprint Labs in California. I am made of many things. Some in Java and some visual basic, but I have never been a dot.commer."

The prototype that pops up on the computer screen in the cluttered lab in Burlingame is named after Sprint employee Sandy Cuskaden, a grandmother who defies her years.

Sandy says whilst she thought seeing herself on screen was pretty weird at first, she realised there were a lot of great ways the technology could be used.

"I thought about those people who died in 9/11, and thought if they had something like this all those little children and wives could have their loved ones still talk to them or be there."

Wake up to 007

In theory e-Sandy could be anyone you liked, from Shakespeare reading to your children to Pierce Brosnan waking you up in the morning and reading the news headlines as you get dressed.

Do you fancy Shakespeare as your assistant?

The scientists at the lab say the appeal of the whole project lies in the fact you don't have to be a techno whiz to operate it.

Mike O'Brien, who is the manager of systems and services at the lab says: "We are eliminating the requirement that you understand the technology and how to use it.

"All you need to know is how to phrase a request in a humanly meaningful way and the system will translate that into the technical language for the various kinds of networks that the e-assistant controls."

So that means when you want to burn a CD, you don't actually need to know how to do it because e-Sandy will.

And, of course, the whole thing can be personalised so it recognises you on sight and understands the way you talk and the way you phrase things.

Science fact not fiction

This all may seem like shades of fantasy, but De Nap reckons products like e-Sandy will be on the market perhaps in five years.

Mike O'Brien: Just ask the question

"The problem we have to solve is what's going to make my life easier. Today an e-assistant might sound like a wacky idea but only a few years ago people thought PDAs and kids carrying cell phones were wacky and amazing."

While e-Sandy is a virtual entity, the question being asked is how far are we from the world of fully functioning robots like Hal from the classic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey?

Our most advanced robot has the collective intelligence of a lobotomised cockroach

Dr Michio Kaku

Dr Michio Kaku - one of the US's most revered physicists and holds the Henry Semat Professorship in Theoretical Physics at the City University of New York - claims we are decades away.

He says: "Our most advanced robot has the collective intelligence of a cockroach. A lobotomised cockroach. Our most advanced robot built at Carnegie Mellon takes six hours to walk across the room."

Frank De Nap is not so pessimistic.

"Technology is already moving towards robots. One of last year's hottest toys was the robotic dog. And once you have the robotic community put more functionality and intelligence on computers there will be more experimentation in that space."

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Do you like the idea of having a bit of software to run your life? Or does it all sound a bit too much like bad science fiction? Let us know using the form below.

Every Monday Dot.life looks at how technology has changed our lives, and more importantly how we would like to change our lives. Let us know your views, also using the form below.

Your comments so far:

Will that helpful e-assistant let me burn a CD full of music that I should not be burning?
Fred B, Finland

A robot telling us what to do all day! Who then is the robot?
Jacko, England

Sounds good... until you imagine having your life run by the the Microsoft Paperclip.
Mary, UK

Of course, this is not a new idea and I actually have a device that remembers my appointments, determines the weather, reads my e-mails, etc. - it's my brain and I've had it for some 40 years now. OK, it's a bit old and possibly obselete but it gets the job done (mostly). I think that when our lives are getting so complex and busy that our wetware can't handle it then maybe we should take a good long look at what's actually important and bin the rest.
Jane, England

After 25 years as a scientific programmer I'm sceptical. I also work as a translator and have seen what translating programs make out of a job. When I feel depressed I let one of these programs translate a document. Moments later I usually roll over the floor with laughter. Moreover I couldn't bring myself to sack my cuddly, inefficient secretary who trips up her PC at least once a day but is such a fine warm person.
Claudio Cantadore, Italy

How does it know you have an umbrella? How does it know that you are even going outside? How does it know what files you need to take to work? It won't 'know' unless you tell it! Think about the time it would take to feed it with all of the information about your life! What happens if something changes? If your umbrella breaks, will it automatically tell you to buy a new one, no, you will have to tell it to tell you to buy a new one! Glorified Diary!
P Brown, UK

I believe that the e-assistant would be of limited use. And as all technology comes with its price tag, I can see the e-assistant as another over priced executive gadget.
Peter Cunningham, UK

The kind of artificial intelligence needed to run these kind of agents is immensely far off ¿ in technology terms at least. The judgements we make in our lives are based on learnt experience and common practice and all of this is very hard to teach to software, it needs to be learnt as part of a greater framework. A computer cannot understand why a cup of coffee may be so important to an early morning riser and therefore cannot make realistic decisions about this. In my view many huge advances need to be made in language processing, neural nets and program growth before you can guarantee that Sandy won't suggest you have both toast and soldiers with your boiled egg.
Mat Ripley, UK

Despite all the new technology most of our lives are no more productive (at work or home). Most people do most things the same way as they always have. We need something like this - but it always seems to be five years away.
Robert Cheyne, London

The key phrase in this article is "you don't actually need to know how to do it". People will better understand the benefits of technology if they understand how it works. Do we want better, more versatile and useable technology, or substandard technology designed to encourage laziness and stupidity?
Neil Saunders, Sydney, Australia

The notion that robots can assist the human species is a commendable and worthwhile one which should be explored for all areas where human life is at risk. The idea that we could have an electronic assistant informing us what we should take to work, who we are seeing, where we should be going really seems to be another hi-tech way of changing our lives to embrace the idea we live to work and should be as productive as possible for our beloved shareholders!
Morgan Jenkins, GB

I'd love one of these. I hope they give it decent conversational abilities - I'd much rather talk to a computer than 90% of the people I know.
Anthony M, UK

Anything that makes everyday life less complicated has to be a good thing
Leonard Totton, N Ireland

This software sounds like a lot of fun and fairly useful. I don't need anything like that, I can't imagine anyone really does, but it would be fun. As long as it isn't like that irritating Bonzi Buddy I suppose people will use it.
Renee, Canada