The natural language spoken dialogue
system AGORA has been developed
using a Collaborative Dialogue model
with Mixed Initiative and Computational
Linguistic models and experiences.
Thanks to these technologies, the system
is highly flexible and it doesn’t need
keywords or directed menus. In this demo
you will see the multilingual ability and
the proactivity possibilities of the
system. You will also observe a
multiservice system and a vocal platform
with the last advances in data collection
of expert subdialogues

Hernández Gómez, Luis

Relaño Gil, José

Rodríguez Gancedo, María del Carmen

Villarrubia Grande, Luis

Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Alicante

AGORA.   Multilingual  Multiplatform  Architecture  for  the   development of Natural Language Voice Services  Abstract The natural language spoken dialogue system AGORA has been developed using a Collaborative Dialogue model with Mixed Initiative and Computational Linguistic models and experiences. Thanks to these technologies, the system is highly flexible and it doesn’t need keywords or directed menus. In this demo you will see the multilingual ability and the proacti-vity possibilities of the system. You will also observe a multiservice system and a vocal platform with the last advances in data collection of expert subdialogues. 1 Introduction The most important feature of any modern speech-system is the vast amount of information that must manage. The exponential growth of this amount of information has introduced new complexity to these systems. We have developed a Customer Communication Speech System, AGORA, based on a natural spoken dialogue with four basic pillars:    Proactivity.  Recuperation and Management of dialogue mistakes.  Learning Skill to structure and store di-fferent kinds of knowledge.  Reusing Ability of expert subdialogue modules.  This technology enables people to communicate and obtain information in an intuitive way without the necessity of guided  menus that request the user to know keywords or special terminology. The system is Collaborative with free interaction and not guided. Users can ask any question to the system, when and how they want to, using their own everyday words and phrases, just as if they were talking to another person. AGORA it’s been used successfully in a wide range of information services in which customers have been able to communicate with a presential or remote machine monitored by this system. Moreover AGORA has the possibility of incorporating new services since it’s a platform of association, composed by a Kernel and an increasing amount of modules or subdialogues. Another important advantage of AGORA is its infrastructure that facilitates the fast generation of new services and applications. Therefore, it’s not a system that just works for certain services. In fact, it’s been used in a wide range of customer services like information services, Voice Portals, etc.  AGORA is also multilingual and so has the ability to keep dialogues in different languages. By changing only three configuration files, the system is able to “speak” in the selected language.  2 Main Features  Mixed Initiative: the system is able to understand and provide proper interpretation for all the user intentions, in whatever order they appear, and even if the focus of the dialogue has been changed by the user. This means that the user can request to do a task giving the necessary data to complete it in the order that he wants. If the system needs any other information from the user, it will ask him directly. If it’s not possible                    José Relaño, Luis Villarrubia Department of Speech Technology of Telefonica R & D Madrid joserg@tid.es, lvg@tid.es Mari Carmen R. Gancedo,  Luis Hernández, SSR Department of E.T.S.I. of Telecommunication University of Madrid  mcrg52@tid.es,lahg23@tid.es to receive that information, the system will help the user or it will tell him what he can do to achieve his objective. Expert Subdialogues: To improve robustness against recognition errors in mass data obtention we provide different modules that require several complex processes that have been isolated and implemented with the strategies of Segmentation of data structures and Generation of Echoes.  Proactivity: This feature allows the system to take the initiative in certain moments of the dialogue, making suggestions and giving the requested information according to the tastes and frequent uses of the user. Proactivity produces changes in the strategies of dialogue control depending on on-line measurements of certain parameters. Multiservice System: One important advantage of AGORA is its infrastructure, which facilitates the fast generation of new services and applications. The association of these new ser-vices is done thanks to a dynamic context change system that also allows the user to change the topic of the conversation at any particular moment of the dialogue as well as moving from one service to another just by asking to do so in a colloquial way. Therefore, the user doesn’t need to use any menus or move back in the dialogue. This context change ability leads to a free dialogue between the user and the system.  Multiplatform system: since AGORA is a platform of association, we can integrate in it other services done in different platforms (like Voice-XML system) and vice versa. The multiplatform is based upon a module (Watcher Agent) that keeps the surveillance of the system and controls in every moment the interrelation and the dispatching of tasks among all the asso-ciated services (see Figure 1). Multilingual Dynamic system: AGORA has being designed to be a multilingual SLDS and initially it is able to hold dialogues in Spanish, Catalan, as well as in Latin American Spanish.  Moreover the user can change the language at any particular moment of the conversation. As we allow a dynamic change of language during the progress of any dialogue, our architecture must deal with the dynamic activation and deactivation of these resources for a particular language.  S e r v i c e  i n  o t h e rP l a t f o r mS r v  o p 2co m 2 .1W a tch e rA g e n tD isp a t c h e rSr v 1 , S r v 2 ,  . .. S r v x ,  . ..  S r v  o p 1N a tu r a l L a n g u a g e  R e so u r c e  I n te r f a c e  co m 0I n itS ta r tco m x .nServ ice in  o th erP latfo rmSrv  o p 1 S u b D i a l o g  E x p e r tFechasHorasTeléfonosNombresCantidadesAGO R AKern elC o n tex tDialo gServ ice 1  A GF u n  1F u n  2F u n  3Gu id edAG OR AKern elC o n tex tDialo gServ ice 2  CDF1 F2F3F4F5F6F7F8Dis rib u tedServ ice x A Dco m xco m 2C o n fi g u ra ti o nS e rvi ceS Q U ELEnvironm ent  for t he G enerato r o f Services . A G O R Acom 1P O R T A LA G O R AK e r n e lC o n t e x tD i a l o gSubDi a l og Exper tFechas HorasTeléfonosNombresCantidadesFIGURE 1: Flow and Engine AGORA Portal   Demonstration of Portal “AGIL”: In this system we integrate several services with diffe-rent levels of dialogue complexity that demand different dialogue strategies. The particular ser-vices our Voice Portal include are the following: p¼Þv -Information based services:   Traffic, News and Meeting, Weather informs.  -Interactive voice access to a TV guide. ¦         -Personal-agenda: appointments. 	-,    - A hotel reservation facility. |ª - Voice access to electronic                            Mail: Voice mail operation.  vªªs  - Recharge mobile or cash card. Another important feature this demonstration will point out is the multilingual capability of our environment. All the interactions with the Voice Portal can be done either in Spanish, Catalan or Latin American Spanish. Moreover a user can switch dynamically from one language to another just saying expressions like “now I prefer to speak in Catalan”. We will illustrate, therefore, in a real application working on a mobile telephony platform, this multilingual and multiservice environment with Proactivity.   

AGORA, multilingual multiplatform architecture for the development of natural language voice services

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Alicante

RUA