Automating spoken dialogue systems

Abstract. Spoken dialogue interfaces apply in a number of applications. Engaging in meaningful conversation presupposes the ability to recognize and generate different conversational moves, and to adaptively carry on a dialogue. Although the portability of dialogue interfaces is highly desirable, few current approaches address it seriously. We describe a portable toolkit for constructing spoken dialogue interfaces. We present the representations and techniques used to customize an interface to a particular domain and application. Our approach relies on shallow knowledge of the domain, and interprets a rule-based model of the dialogue.