  Since the inception of human research studies, researchers must often
interact with participants on a set schedule to collect data. Researchers
manually perform many interactions, leading to considerable time and financial
expenses. Usually, user-provided data collection consists of surveys
administered via telephone or email. These methods are tedious for the survey
administrators, which could cause fatigue and potentially lead to collection
mistakes. This project leverages recent advancements in automatic speech
recognition, speech-to-text, natural language understanding (NLU), and
finite-state machines to automate research protocols. This generalized
application is fully customizable and irrespective of any research study. New
research protocols can be quickly created based on these parameters once
envisioned. Thus, we present SmartState, a fully-customizable, state-driven
protocol manager combined with supporting AI components to autonomously manage
user data and intelligently determine users' intentions through chat and
end-device interactions.
