A Plan-Based Model for Response Generation in Collaborative Task-Oriented Dialogues

This paper presents a plan-based architecture for response generation in collaborative consultation dialogues, with emphasis on cases in which the system (consultant) and user (executing agent) disagree. Our work contributes to an overall system for collaborative problem-solving by providing a plan-based framework that captures the {\em Propose-Evaluate-Modify} cycle of collaboration, and by allowing the system to initiate subdialogues to negotiate proposed additions to the shared plan and to provide support for its claims. In addition, our system handles in a unified manner the negotiation of proposed domain actions, proposed problem-solving actions, and beliefs proposed by discourse actions. Furthermore, it captures cooperative responses within the collaborative framework and accounts for why questions are sometimes never answered.Comment: 8 pages, to appear in the Proceedings of AAAI-94. LaTeX source file, requires aaai.sty and epsf.tex. Figures included in separate file

Dialogue management systems: a survey and overview

This report provides an overview of the current issues and techniques for the modelling of dialogues using a computer. A dialogue management system can manage a dialogue between two or more agents, be they human or computer. Recently, increasingly complex dialogues are being modelled which allow a range of discourse phenomena including ellipsis and anaphoric reference. Such dialogues are thought to be similar to those between two humans, and accurate modelling of these phenomena leads to "pleasant", i.e. easy to talk to, and natural human-computer dialogues. Dialogue management can be classified into three often overlapping approaches: discourse grammars, plan-based and collaborative approaches. The design of a system often begins by eliciting the language used initially between two humans and later by Wizard of Oz experiments. Special issues relating to dialogue management systems are discussed including recovery strategies from different types of errors and the coding of dialogue in corpora. Lastly, approaches to evaluation are briefly discussed from the qualitative and quantitative viewpoints, recognising the importance and size of this sub-field

Dialogue structure models: an engineering approach to machine analysis and generation of dialogue

The problem area addressed within this research is the processing and understanding of natural English dialogue by computer. The presented work fundamentally constitutes the development of a theory for modelling natural dialogue, and the practical implementation of that theory. There are two major aspects of consideration within the theory: the modelling of dialogue structure is balanced against certain individual factors. The structure of the dialogue is modelled via the mechanism of the Dialogue Structure Models and its constituent parts, accounting for situational context, participant motivation, participant role(s) and other contributory factors. The individual factors, on the other hand, are peculiar to the dialogue currently in progress, and cannot be pre-determined in the way that structure can. These factors include:1. The personal characteristics of the participants (their personalities, backgrounds, interests and belief systems); 2. The overall mood of the participant (how (s)he is feeling today; the emotional state of the participant); 3. Instantiation factors relating to the events and circumstances of the particular dialogue in progress. (For example, how a participant reacts intellectually or emotionally to what the other person has just said).A description of the implementation of this theory is presented, followed by a discussion of the testing techniques used to ensure that the original criteria for success have been met