Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuzHkLWr-dE

UC Students Leverage AI to Create Yucca Chatbot to Assist New Students

March 25, 2025

Ciputra University (UC) students innovated by utilising artificial intelligence (AI) to create an interactive chatbot called Yucca.

This chatbot is designed to help new students obtain important information about campus, including facilities, schedules, and even recommendations for boarding houses.

Dr Trianggoro Wiradinata, M.Eng.Sc, CDSS, Director of AI and Technology Transformation at UC, revealed that this project emerged from a competition held by UC. “The competition aimed to create a virtual assistant in the form of the campus mascot, Yuka, that could provide information in both voice and text via the official UC website,” he explained on Monday (March 24, 2025).

This collaboration involved two study programs: Informatics and Visual Communication Design (VCD). Informatics students utilised AI technology in their lectures, while VCD students developed the appearance and animation of Yuka’s character. “This innovation proves that cross-disciplinary collaboration can produce technology-based solutions that benefit the campus community,” he concluded.

Willas Daniel Rorrong Lomban Tobing, a member of the Informatics team, explained that the chatbot was developed using an Application Programming Interface (API). “The AI ​​technology we used includes GBT AI to generate intelligent responses and Eleven Labs AI to make the Yucca visuals produce sounds,” he explained.

Meanwhile, the data used in the chatbot was collected from UC’s internal website, including additional information about boarding houses around campus. “Our main challenge was adapting the design to make it attractive and acceptable to both teams,” said Willas. Meanwhile, Gerald Hartanto from the Visual team explained that creating the Yuka character began with determining her traits and characteristics.

The development process included creating a storyboard, rigging to provide movement to the character model, and adjusting the size and format to ensure compatibility with the system developed by the programming team. “The rigging and storyboarding process took about a month, while integration with the programming system took about a week,” explained Gerald. Video & Reporter: Sulvi Sofiana Video Editor: Ahmad Zaimul Haq

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