NATURAL HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION FOR VIRTUAL PERSONAL ASSISTANT SYSTEMS

Technologies for natural language interactions with virtual personal assistant systems include a computing device configured to capture audio input, distort the audio input to produce a number of distorted audio variations, and perform speech recognition on the audio input and the distorted audio variants. The computing device selects a result from a large number of potential speech recognition results based on contextual information. The computing device may measure a user's engagement level by using an eye tracking sensor to determine whether the user is visually focused on an avatar rendered by the virtual personal assistant. The avatar may be rendered in a disengaged state, a ready state, or an engaged state based on the user engagement level. The avatar may be rendered as semitransparent in the disengaged state, and the transparency may be reduced in the ready state or the engaged state. Other embodiments are described and claimed.