Improving Dialogue Management: Quality Datasets vs Models

Task-oriented dialogue systems (TODS) have become crucial for users to interact with machines and computers using natural language. One of its key components is the dialogue manager, which guides the conversation towards a good goal for the user by providing the best possible response. Previous works have proposed rule-based systems (RBS), reinforcement learning (RL), and supervised learning (SL) as solutions for the correct dialogue management; in other words, select the best response given input by the user. However, this work argues that the leading cause of DMs not achieving maximum performance resides in the quality of the datasets rather than the models employed thus far; this means that dataset errors, like mislabeling, originate a large percentage of failures in dialogue management. We studied the main errors in the most widely used datasets, Multiwoz 2.1 and SGD, to demonstrate this hypothesis. To do this, we have designed a synthetic dialogue generator to fully control the amount and type of errors introduced in the dataset. Using this generator, we demonstrated that errors in the datasets contribute proportionally to the performance of the model

E-learning multimedia applications: Towards an engineering of content creation

In the same manner that e-learning applications are becoming increasingly important at the university, there are still some critical questions that should be solved with the objective of making use of the potential offered by currentWeb Technologies. The creation of contents that are able of capturing the attention of interest of the students and their disposal in an appropriate way constitute the main purpose of this work. The teaching content engineering expounded shows the different stages that should form part of the process. A development team, composed of different professional profiles, will work together with the lecturers of the subject to which the contents are been created, i.e. multimedia videos and interactive applications. This process should be developed according to a methodology that assure the use of appropriate resources, all that tasks -suitable of being- should be modularized and factorized. This paper presents the acquired experience in the development and use of multimedia contents for e-learning applications, created for some of the subjects of the degree in computer science engineering. The deliveries of these contents make use of Internet and video streaming techniques. The result of the work shows the students satisfaction, including their comments

OLC, On-Line Compiler to Teach Programming Languages

The advance of Internet towards Web 2.0 conveys the potential it has in a wide range of scopes. The ongoing progress of the Web technology and its availability in teaching and learning, as well as a students’ profile increasingly more used to managing an important amount of digital information, offers lecturers the opportunity and challenge of putting at students’ disposal didactic tools making use of the Internet. Programming is one of the essential areas taught in university studies of Computer Science and other engineering degrees. At present, it is a knowledge acquired through tutorial classes and the practice with different tools for programming. This paper shows the acquired experience in the development and use of a simple compiler accessible through a Web page. In addition it presents a teaching proposal for its use in subjects that include programming languages lessons. OLC - On-Line Compiler - is an application which greatly lightens the student’s workload at the initial stage of programming. During this initial period they will neither have to deal with the complexities of the installation and the configuration of these types of tools, nor with the understanding of multiple options which they present. Therefore students can concentrate on the comprehension of the programming structures and the programming language to be studied

Towards Real-Time Multiresolution Face/Head Detection

Reliable and real-time face detection is a basic ability for any Vision Based Interface. This paper combines and exploits the bene¯ts of two di®erent face detectors specialized each one in a speci¯c context. The resulting system improves their respective individual performances by means of their cooperation, the integration of temporal coherence, persistence and explicit knowledge about the human face, achieving a robust and close to real-time multiresolution face detector

Video Lectures: An Analysis of Their Useful Life Span and Sustainable Production

The learning effectiveness of video lectures has been extensively studied by the scientific community, but research on their cost-effectiveness and sustainable production is still very scarce. To shed light on these aspects, this study has measured the useful life span and cost-effectiveness of a large catalog of video lectures produced for undergraduate courses at a Spanish university. A Kaplan–Meier survival analysis has been performed to identify factors linked to video longevity. The analysis accounted for variables such as the video production style (screencast, slideshow, chalk and talk, talking head, and on-location film) and others such as the instructional purpose and field of knowledge. The teachers involved in video production and integration have been surveyed to discover causes of video obsolescence. In addition, using life span and production cost data, the cost-effectiveness of each production style over time was estimated. The results suggest that production style affects video longevity, and in particular, dynamic visuals are more related to longer life spans compared with static contents. Screencast stands out as the most cost-effective production style, having the best ratio of life span to production effort. Some practical suggestions are provided for producing video lectures with higher longevity expectations

Runtime Self-Adaptation in a Component-Based Robotic Framework *

Abstract — The development and maintenance of software for robotic systems is a hard task due to the complexity inherent in these systems. Besides, the resulting applications have to deal with limited resources and variable execution conditions that must be considered in order to keep an acceptable system performance. To address both problems we have integrated a set of dynamic adaptation policies inside CoolBOT, a component oriented framework for programming robotic systems. CoolBOT contributes to reduce the programming effort, promoting robustness and code reuse, while the adaptation scheme provides a dynamic modulation of system performance to meet available computational resources at runtime. In this paper we also present two demonstrators that outline the benefits of using the proposed approach in the development of real robotic applications. Index Terms — robotic systems, self-adaptive software components I

More about CoolBOT ∗

This document presents an operating version of CoolBOT, a component oriented software framework for programming robotic systems, that was already presented in WAF’2002 [3] when it was at the beginning of its development. CoolBOT has been designed having in mind the idea of programming by integrating software components, in order to reduce the developing effort typically invested when programming robots. CoolBOT also fosters some interesting features, such as asynchronous execution, asynchronous inter communication, data-flowdriven processing, and cognizant failure systems. A simple demonstrator illustrates the benefits of using the proposed approach.