Utilizing Statistical Dialogue Act Processing in Verbmobil

In this paper, we present a statistical approach for dialogue act processing in the dialogue component of the speech-to-speech translation system \vm. Statistics in dialogue processing is used to predict follow-up dialogue acts. As an application example we show how it supports repair when unexpected dialogue states occur.Comment: 6 pages; compressed and uuencoded postscript file; to appear in ACL-9

Some experiments in speech act prediction

In this paper, we present a statistical approach for speech act prediction in the dialogue component of the speech-to-speech translation system Verbmobil. The prediction algorithm is based on work known from language modelling and uses N-gram information computed from a training corpus. We demonstrate the performance of this method with 10 experiments. These experiments vary in two dimensions, namely whether the N-gram information is updated while processing, and whether deviations from the standard dialogue structure are processed. Six of the experiments use complete dialogues, while four process only the speech acts of one dialogue partner. It is shown that the predictions are best when using the update feature and deviations are not processed. Even the processing of incomplete dialogues then yields acceptable results. Another experiment shows that a training corpus size of about 40 dialogues is sufficient for the prediction task, and that the structure of the dialogues of the Verbmobil corpus we use differs remarkably with respect to the predictions

A Robust and Efficient Three-Layered Dialogue Component for a Speech-to-Speech Translation System

We present the dialogue component of the speech-to-speech translation system VERBMOBIL. In contrast to conventional dialogue systems it mediates the dialogue while processing maximally 50% of the dialogue in depth. Special requirements like robustness and efficiency lead to a 3-layered hybrid architecture for the dialogue module, using statistics, an automaton and a planner. A dialogue memory is constructed incrementally.Comment: Postscript file, compressed and uuencoded, 15 pages, to appear in Proceedings of EACL-95, Dublin

The Approach to the Thermodynamic Limit in Lattice QCD at \mu\neq0

The expectation value of the complex phase factor of the fermion determinant is computed to leading order in the $p$-expansion of the chiral Lagrangian. The computation is valid for $\mu<m_\pi/2$ and determines the dependence of the sign problem on the volume and on the geometric shape of the volume. In the thermodynamic limit with $L_i \to \infty$ at fixed temperature $1/L_0$, the average phase factor vanishes. In the low temperature limit where $L_i/L_0$ is fixed as $L_i$ becomes large the average phase factor approaches one. The results for a finite volume compare well with lattice results obtained by Allton {\it et al}.. After taking appropriate limits, we reproduce previously derived results for the $\epsilon$-regime and for 1-dimensional QCD. The distribution of the phase itself is also computed.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure

Treatment of incomplete dialogues in a speech-to-speech translation system

For the speech-to-speech translation system verbmobil the dialogue component has the task of providing contextual information for other verbmobil subcomponents and to follow the flow of the dialogue. Since verbmobil operates on demand, only parts of the dialogue are processed using syntactic and semantic knowledge. Therefore, robustness with respect to incomplete structures is a basic requirement. We show the performance of the statistic prediction module and the planning module under such conditions

Datenplattformen und KI-Werkzeuge zur Stärkung der regionalen Ernährungssysteme

Anfang Juni 2021 startete das vom Bundesministerium für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft (BMEL) geförderte Konsortialprojekt "Stadt-Land-Fluss" (SLF - Daten- und KI-gestützter Aufbau und Stärkung von Wertschöpfungsketten im Bereich der regionalen Ernährungssysteme). In diesem Querschnittsprojekt wird die Transformation und Zusammenführung der regionalen Agrar- und Ernährungswirtschaft und Ernährungspolitik auf Basis digitaler Datenplattformen für Wirtschafts- und Ernährungsdaten mit Methoden der Künstlichen Intelligenz (KI) erforscht. Der Beitrag stellt die Motivation des Projektes Stadt-Land-Fluss vor. Ein wichtiger Aspekt im Projekt ist es, die digitale Souveränität von Ernährungsdaten - insbesondere der lokalen Ebene - zu stärken

Predicting dialogue acts for a speech-to-speech translation system

We present the application of statistical language modeling methods for the prediction of the next dialogue act. This prediction is used by different modules of the speech-to-speech translation system VERBMOBIL. The statistical approach uses deleted interpolation of n-gram frequencies as basis and determines the interpolation weights by a modified version of the standard optimization algorithm. Additionally, we present and evaluate different approaches to improve the prediction process, e.g. including knowledge from a dialogue grammar. Evaluation shows that including the speaker information and mirroring the data delivers the best results

Dialogue acts in Verbmobil 2

This report describes the dialogue phases and the second edition dialogue acts which are used in the VERBMOBIL 2 project [...]. While in the first project phase the scenario was restricted to appointment scheduling dialogues, it has been extended to travel planning in the second phase with appointment scheduling being only a part of the new scenario