Improving speech interaction with mixed initiative dialogue Loquendo SDS- Spoken Dialog System

Abstract

The transition from system-directed to mixed-initiative human-machine dialogue has been a focus of several research institutes and industries during the past several years [4,5]. The term “mixedinitiative” was introduced in the artificial intelligence literature by Jaime Carbonell, who described a prototype that “is capable of maintaining a mixed initiative dialogue with the student, with questions asked by either side and answered by the other ” [3]. A similar definition is proposed by Balentine and Morgan: they write that, the term “mixed-initiative ” identifies “a dialogue in which interactions are sometimes initiated by the users and sometimes by the machine ” [1], but that smooth turn-taking is still difficult, and not yet fully realized. The interaction style in mixed-initiative dialogues may be radically different from the question-answer sequences provided by most off-the-shelf speech tools, because users can decide in which order their requests parameters are to be specified, reducing the dialogue time and increasing the success rate. However, the increased flexibility also promotes greater complexity. Actually, several factors affect the transition in question, the most important of which are the troubles related to modelling a user’s spontaneous linguistic behaviour, and the development costs of highly flexible dialogue models. Loquendo has identified some feasible solutions to some of these critical factors