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TRINDI Annual Report 1999
Information exchange in dialogue
TRINDI (Task Oriented Instructional Dialogue) is an EU-funded research
project concerned with
- human-machine interaction using natural dialogue
- task-oriented instructional dialogues - dialogues that enable
the user to make choices in the performance of a certain task
- route planning and instructional texts for xerox machine
maintenance (as particularexamples)
- finding general and portable technology that will enable the
construction of dialogue systems
- increasing the flexibility and knowledge richness of dialogue
systems by representing the information which is exchanged in a
dialogue
- developing a dialogue toolbox which allows developers to
define dialogue rules for information update and to experiment
with different kinds of information representing the current
state of the dialogue
Summary of activities in 1999
The second year of the project began 1st February, 1999. During this
year we
- developed a theoretical model of dialogue moves and information
state revision in dialogue, in the form of a general framework with
three different instantiations
- implemented and documented a first version of the TRINDIKIT dialogue toolbox
- implemented preliminary versions of three restricted dialogue
systems using TRINDIKIT: Midas,
SRI-Autoroute
and GoDiS
- conducted preliminary work on evaluating these three systems
against a grid of levels on interaction of the user and the system
- conducted preliminary research on adapting our model of dialogue
moves and information state revision to the analysis and generation
of instructional texts
- conducted preliminary research on the possibilities of
accommodating focus and prosodic information into the TRINDI
technology
- conducted preliminary work on extending some of the previous
work in the FraCaS project on underspecification to dialogue
Market prospects -- menus vs dialogues
Much of our interaction with automated task oriented systems is
currently menu driven. For example, an automated system to book a
cinema ticket can involve first choosing the city, then the film, the
cinema and the time. Current technology using a telephone interface
involves listening to a number options and responding by pressing a
number.
An example of a more complex menu structure is present in the
programming facilities of mobile phones where the menu can be viewed
as a tree structure which the user has to descend starting at the root
node.
While menu interfaces are ubiquitous in modern technology they are
often tedious and frustrating.
Current dialogue technology can straightforwardly implement menu
structures but the effect can be even more tedious since the user is
forced to use the natural and efficient modality of speech in a very
unnatural way descending the menu structure one node at a time.
TRINDI technology offers the possibility of allowing the user to
present several pieces of relevant information at one time or to
present information in the order in which the user finds most natural
(either in speech or written interfaces). The system will request
information that is missing. If information presented by the user is
relevant to a specific branch of the menu system then the system will
be able to jump directly to that branch without requiring the user to
step through all the intervening nodes. If the user does not know
what to do the system can present the options. This means that users
can use their own conception of the knowledge space and not be locked
to that of the designer of the system. This will allow for more
natural dialogic interaction with computers in situations where the
conventional interface of keyboard and screen is impossible or
undesirable.
While TRINDI technology is not limited to the "dialogization" of
menus, this application alone is of huge market potential given the
omnipresence of menus in current interfaces.
Innovative technology outlook
Why do people engaged in a dialogue say what they say when they say
it? What effect do their contributions have on the information
available to the participants in the dialogue? These are central
questions for the automation of dialogue.
Machines need to have simple strategies that simulate aspects of human
dialogue behaviour. The strategies need to be simple enough to be
computationally robust and yet complex enough to make the dialogues
coherent and not too irritating for the user. The simplest strategies
involve just producing particular utterances in sequence or directly
computing a response on the basis of the preceding utterance from the
user. A common more sophisticated approach is to treat dialogues as
games and utterances as instantiations of
a limited set of moves (such as question,
answer, clarification, request, confirmation, etc.). Allowable moves
can be specified in terms of transition networks.
Our approach is to enhance this conception by associating with
dialogue moves representations of the
information that the dialogue participants have. The main
effect of an utterance is to change this information in some way, and
the information is used by the participants to decide what to do next.
The TRINDIKIT dialogue toolbox
TRINDIKIT is a toolbox for the development of dialogue systems. It
focusses on the development of dialogue move engines. A
dialogue move engine updatesthe information state of the dialogues
system on the basis of observed dialogue moves and selects appropriate
moves to be performed.
Apart from proposing a general system architecture, the TRINDIKIT
also specifies formsats for defining information states, update rules,
dialogue moves and associated algorithms.
TRINDIKIT provides a general modular architecture for the construction
of and experimentation with dialogue systems and in addition provides:
- definitions of datatypes
- a language and format for specifying upodate rules
- methods for accessing information states
- an algorithm definition language for dialogue move engines and
Control modules
- default modules for input, interpretation, generation and output
- methods for visually inspecting information states
- debugging facilities
The TRINDIKIT comes along with three example systems:
- MIDAS,
Multiple Inference-based Dialogue Analysis System
- GoDiS, Gothenburg
Dialogue System
- Autoroute
TRINDIKIT's homepage
for further information.
Promotion and awareness
The project has created an International
Consultation and User Group (ICUG).
Members of the ICUG were invited to a the TRINDI workshop held on 6th May,
1999 which was held in conjunction with Amstelogue'99 (the third
in a series of international workshops on the Semantics and Pragmatics
of Dialogue), Amsterdam, 7th-9th May. The workshop was open to other
interested participants and invited talks were given by two ICUG
members: David Sadek, CNET France Telecom and Bob Carpenter, Bell
Labs, Lucent Technologies.
The TRINDI project is mainly responsible for organizing the next
conference in the series: Götalog 2000 - Fourth Workshop
on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue to be held in
Göteborg, June 15-17 2000. During this conference there will be a
TRINDI event to which the ICUG and others will be invited.
Future work
The project will end in July 2000. During the final seven months we
will
- complete our work on dialogue dynamics and levels of interaction
- complete our work on restrictive dialogue systems
- complete our work on the application of the TRINDI dialogue
model to instructional texts
- complete our work on information structure and prosodic cues
- examine issues in underspecified and robust interpretation
- produce an extended version of the TRINDIKIT toolbox
Further information
Further information about the project can be obtained on the TRINDI web
page or from the project coordinator:
- Coordinator
- Robin Cooper
- Email
- trindi@ling.gu.se
- Tel.
- +46-31-773-2536
- Fax
- +46-31-773-4853
- Mail
- TRINDI Administrator,
Department of Linguistics,
Göteborg University,
Box 200,
S-405 30 Göteborg,
Sweden
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