Formalising control in robust spoken dialogue systems

The spoken language interface is now becoming an in-creasingly serious research topic with application to a wide range of highly engineered systems. Such systems not only include innocuous human-computer interactions, but also encompass shared-control safety critical devices such as automotive vehicles and robotic systems. Spoken Dialogue Systems (SDS) are the language architecture used to provide linguistic interaction in these applications, but they have to date been notoriously difficult to engineer in a robust and safe manner. In this paper we report on our efforts to im-prove the safety and overall usability of dialogue enabled applications through the employment of formal methods in SDS development and testing. Specifically, we use Commu-nicating Sequential Processes (CSP) as the basis of a new approach to the specification, design and verification of dia-logue manager control. Moreover, to support this approach, we introduce FDMSC – the Formal Dialogue Management for Shared Control toolkit – and illustrate its use in the con-struction of formal methods based spoken dialogue systems. 1

Survey of the State of the Art in Natural Language Generation: Core tasks, applications and evaluation

This paper surveys the current state of the art in Natural Language Generation (NLG), defined as the task of generating text or speech from non-linguistic input. A survey of NLG is timely in view of the changes that the field has undergone over the past decade or so, especially in relation to new (usually data-driven) methods, as well as new applications of NLG technology. This survey therefore aims to (a) give an up-to-date synthesis of research on the core tasks in NLG and the architectures adopted in which such tasks are organised; (b) highlight a number of relatively recent research topics that have arisen partly as a result of growing synergies between NLG and other areas of artificial intelligence; (c) draw attention to the challenges in NLG evaluation, relating them to similar challenges faced in other areas of Natural Language Processing, with an emphasis on different evaluation methods and the relationships between them.Comment: Published in Journal of AI Research (JAIR), volume 61, pp 75-170. 118 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl

Multiple Viewpoints for Tutoring Systems.

This thesis investigates the issue of how a tutoring system, intelligent or otherwise, may be designed to utilise multiple viewpoints on the domain being tutored, and what benefits may accrue from this. The issue was relevant to earlier systems, such as WHY (Stevens et al. 1979) and STEAMER (Hollan et al. 1984). The relevant literature is reviewed, and criteria which must be met by our implementation of viewpoints are established. Viewpoints are conceptualised as pre-defined structures which can be represented in a tutoring system with the potential to increase its effectiveness and adaptability. A formalism is proposed where inferences are drawn from a model by a range of operators. The application of this combination to problems and goals is to be described heuristically. This formulation is then related to the educational philosophy of Cognitive Apprenticeship. The formalism is tested and refined in a protocol analysis study which leads to the definition of three classes of operators. The viewpoint structure is used to produce a detailed formulation of the domain of Prolog debugging for novices, with the goal that students should learn how different bugs may be localised using different viewpoints. Three models of execution are defined, based on those described by Bundy et al. (1985). These are mapped onto a restricted catalogue of bugs by specifying a number of conventions which produce a simplified and consistent domain suited to the needs of novices. VIPER, a tutoring system which can itself accomplish and explain the relevant domain tasks, is described. VIPER is based on a meta-interpreter which produces detailed execution histories which are then analysed. An evaluation of VIPER is reported, with generally favourable results. VIPER is discussed in relation to the research goals, the usefulness of Cognitive Apprenticeship in supporting such a design, and possible future work. This discussion exemplifies the use of established student modeling techniques, the implementation of other viewpoints on Prolog, and the application of the design strategy to other domains. Claims are made in relation to the formulation of viewpoints, the architecture of VIPER, and the relevance of Cognitive Apprenticeship to the use of multiple viewpoints

Lexical and Grammar Resource Engineering for Runyankore & Rukiga: A Symbolic Approach

Current research in computational linguistics and natural language processing (NLP) requires the existence of language resources. Whereas these resources are available for a few well-resourced languages, there are many languages that have been neglected. Among the neglected and / or under-resourced languages are Runyankore and Rukiga (henceforth referred to as Ry/Rk). Recently, the NLP community has started to acknowledge that resources for under-resourced languages should also be given priority. Why? One reason being that as far as language typology is concerned, the few well-resourced languages do not represent the structural diversity of the remaining languages. The central focus of this thesis is about enabling the computational analysis and generation of utterances in Ry/Rk. Ry/Rk are two closely related languages spoken by about 3.4 and 2.4 million people respectively. They belong to the Nyoro-Ganda (JE10) language zone of the Great Lakes, Narrow Bantu of the Niger-Congo language family.The computational processing of these languages is achieved by formalising the grammars of these two languages using Grammatical Framework (GF) and its Resource Grammar Library (RGL). In addition to the grammar, a general-purpose computational lexicon for the two languages is developed. Although we utilise the lexicon to tremendously increase the lexical coverage of the grammars, the lexicon can be used for other NLP tasks.In this thesis a symbolic / rule-based approach is taken because the lack of adequate languages resources makes the use of data-driven NLP approaches unsuitable for these languages

Multimodal Shared-Control Interaction for Mobile Robots in AAL Environments

This dissertation investigates the design, development and implementation of cognitively adequate, safe and robust, spatially-related, multimodal interaction between human operators and mobile robots in Ambient Assisted Living environments both from the theoretical and practical perspectives. By focusing on different aspects of the concept Interaction, the essential contribution of this dissertation is divided into three main research packages; namely, Formal Interaction, Spatial Interaction and Multimodal Interaction in AAL. As the principle package, in Formal Interaction, research effort is dedicated to developing a formal language based interaction modelling and management solution process and a unified dialogue modelling approach. This package aims to enable a robust, flexible, and context-sensitive, yet formally controllable and tractable interaction. This type of interaction can be used to support the interaction management of any complex interactive systems, including the ones covered in the other two research packages. In the second research package, Spatial Interaction, a general qualitative spatial knowledge based multi-level conceptual model is developed and proposed. The goal is to support a spatially-related interaction in human-robot collaborative navigation. With a model-based computational framework, the proposed conceptual model has been implemented and integrated into a practical interactive system which has been evaluated by empirical studies. It has been particularly tested with respect to a set of high-level and model-based conceptual strategies for resolving the frequent spatially-related communication problems in human-robot interaction. Last but not least, in Multimodal Interaction in AAL, attention is drawn to design, development and implementation of multimodal interaction for elderly persons. In this elderly-friendly scenario, ageing-related characteristics are carefully considered for an effective and efficient interaction. Moreover, a standard model based empirical framework for evaluating multimodal interaction is provided. This framework was especially applied to evaluate a minutely developed and systematically improved elderly-friendly multimodal interactive system through a series of empirical studies with groups of elderly persons

An exploration of the use of language within therapeutic interventions for people experiencing psychosis

Formulation is a fundamental component in many of the psychological therapies practised within the National Health Service (e.g. cognitive behavioural therapy and psychodynamic therapy) (British Psychology Society, Division of Clinical Psychology, [BPS, DCP], 2011). It is seen as a starting point for the process of intervention (DCP, 2011). However, despite the importance placed on formulation, it is under conceptualised and under researched (Johnstone & Dallos, 2015). More specifically, little is known about how service users experience and make use of formulation in therapy for psychosis. Semi structured interviews were undertaken with 11 service users and two clinical psychologists with experience of formulation in therapy for psychosis. Data from the interviews were analysed from a critical realist perspective using grounded theory methodology. An emerging model was constructed to depict the processes that occur during the sharing of a formulation. ‘Linking previous experiences with current ways of being’ and ‘building the therapeutic relationship’ emerged as core reciprocally influential processes. ‘Making use of new understandings’ was also identified as an important process. The findings suggest that formulations should be developed collaboratively and progressively with service users, and that care should be given to the emotions that arise as a result. Further research is necessary to elaborate our understanding of formulation given the importance placed on it in UK clinical psychology

Effecting strategic change:The work of strategic champions in shaping narrative infrastructure

Organisations are under pressure to expand the boundaries of strategic management to better account for socio-ecological dependencies, and to shape the principles that guide decision-making accordingly. Prior research on strategic change focusses on the role of leadership to sensegive, and the response of organisational members. Within a strategy-asnarrative perspective, narrative infrastructure has been identified as a valuable but underexplored theory to explain how narrative guides the decisions and actions of organisational members and how leaders use narrative infrastructure to sensegive strategic change to the organisation. Yet, we know less on how narrative infrastructure is shifted, and the work of others than leaders to do this. I undertake a grounded study of how strategic champions (individuals working to influence strategic issues) support leadership in initiating and adopting a shift in narrative infrastructure. My analysis reveals that strategic champions undertake six different stages of narrative work: prompting, enrolling, underpinning, reinforcing, reconstituting and revisiting. Across these stages, strategic champions draw on discursive competences to sensegive the new master story to both leaders, and the organisation more broadly. I make two contributions to the research conversation on narrative within strategy-aspractice. First, I extend the metaphor of narrative infrastructure as a set of rails that guide decision-making, and present a more fulsome picture of narrative infrastructure as a rail network - made up of several master stories which may have different, and at times competing, organisational or institutional logics underpinning them. Second, I identify the work of strategic champions to support leadership in prompting, initiating and revisiting a shift in the narrative infrastructure of an organisation, and demonstrate how they build master story legitimacy, understanding and ownership. My thesis also lends insights to practice, identifying the tactics employed and competences to be developed by strategic champions undertaking to expand the boundaries of strategic management and shift the principles that guide decision-making in their organisations

Semantic transfer in Verbmobil

This paper is a detailed discussion of semantic transfer in the context of the Verbmobil Machine Translation project. The use of semantic transfer as a translation mechanism is introduced and justified by comparison with alternative approaches. Some criteria for evaluation of transfer frameworks are discussed and a comparison is made of three different approaches to the representation of translation rules or equivalences. This is followed by a discussion of control of application of transfer rules and interaction with a domain description and inference component