Handbook of Multimodal and Spoken Dialogue Systems


Book Description

Dictation systems, read-aloud software for the blind, speech control of machinery, geographical information systems with speech input and output, and educational software with `talking head' artificial tutorial agents are already on the market. The field is expanding rapidly, and new methods and applications emerge almost daily. But good sources of systematic information have not kept pace with the body of information needed for development and evaluation of these systems. Much of this information is widely scattered through speech and acoustic engineering, linguistics, phonetics, and experimental psychology. The Handbook of Multimodal and Spoken Dialogue Systems presents current and developing best practice in resource creation for speech input/output software and hardware. This volume brings experts in these fields together to give detailed `how to' information and recommendations on planning spoken dialogue systems, designing and evaluating audiovisual and multimodal systems, and evaluating consumer off-the-shelf products. In addition to standard terminology in the field, the following topics are covered in depth: How to collect high quality data for designing, training, and evaluating multimodal and speech dialogue systems; How to evaluate real-life computer systems with speech input and output; How to describe and model human-computer dialogue precisely and in depth. Also included: The first systematic medium-scale compendium of terminology with definitions. This handbook has been especially designed for the needs of development engineers, decision-makers, researchers, and advanced level students in the fields of speech technology, multimodal interfaces, multimedia, computational linguistics, and phonetics.




Spoken Dialogue Systems


Book Description

Considerable progress has been made in recent years in the development of dialogue systems that support robust and efficient human-machine interaction using spoken language. Spoken dialogue technology allows various interactive applications to be built and used for practical purposes, and research focuses on issues that aim to increase the system's communicative competence by including aspects of error correction, cooperation, multimodality, and adaptation in context. This book gives a comprehensive view of state-of-the-art techniques that are used to build spoken dialogue systems. It provides an overview of the basic issues such as system architectures, various dialogue management methods, system evaluation, and also surveys advanced topics concerning extensions of the basic model to more conversational setups. The goal of the book is to provide an introduction to the methods, problems, and solutions that are used in dialogue system development and evaluation. It presents dialogue modelling and system development issues relevant in both academic and industrial environments and also discusses requirements and challenges for advanced interaction management and future research. Table of Contents: Preface / Introduction to Spoken Dialogue Systems / Dialogue Management / Error Handling / Case Studies: Advanced Approaches to Dialogue Management / Advanced Issues / Methodologies and Practices of Evaluation / Future Directions / References / Author Biographies




Spoken, Multilingual and Multimodal Dialogue Systems


Book Description

Dialogue systems are a very appealing technology with an extraordinary future. Spoken, Multilingual and Multimodal Dialogues Systems: Development and Assessment addresses the great demand for information about the development of advanced dialogue systems combining speech with other modalities under a multilingual framework. It aims to give a systematic overview of dialogue systems and recent advances in the practical application of spoken dialogue systems. Spoken Dialogue Systems are computer-based systems developed to provide information and carry out simple tasks using speech as the interaction mode. Examples include travel information and reservation, weather forecast information, directory information and product order. Multimodal Dialogue Systems aim to overcome the limitations of spoken dialogue systems which use speech as the only communication means, while Multilingual Systems allow interaction with users that speak different languages. Presents a clear snapshot of the structure of a standard dialogue system, by addressing its key components in the context of multilingual and multimodal interaction and the assessment of spoken, multilingual and multimodal systems In addition to the fundamentals of the technologies employed, the development and evaluation of these systems are described Highlights recent advances in the practical application of spoken dialogue systems This comprehensive overview is a must for graduate students and academics in the fields of speech recognition, speech synthesis, speech processing, language, and human–computer interaction technolgy. It will also prove to be a valuable resource to system developers working in these areas.




Proceedings of the Paralinguistic Information and its Integration in Spoken Dialogue Systems Workshop


Book Description

This volume includes proceedings articles presented at the Workshop on Paralinguistic Information and its Integration in Spoken Dialogue Systems held in Granada, Spain. The material focuses on the three broad areas of spoken dialogue systems for robotics, emotions and spoken dialogue systems, and Spoken dialogue systems for real-world applications The workshop proceedings are part of the 3rd Annual International Workshop on Spoken Dialogue Systems, which brings together researchers from all over the world working in the field of spoken dialogue systems. It provides an international forum for the presentation of research and applications, and for lively discussions among researchers as well as industrialists.




Spoken Dialogue Systems Technology and Design


Book Description

Spoken Dialogue Systems Technology and Design covers key topics in the field of spoken language dialogue interaction from a variety of leading researchers. It brings together several perspectives in the areas of corpus annotation and analysis, dialogue system construction, as well as theoretical perspectives on communicative intention, context-based generation, and modelling of discourse structure. These topics are all part of the general research and development within the area of discourse and dialogue with an emphasis on dialogue systems; corpora and corpus tools and semantic and pragmatic modelling of discourse and dialogue.




Spoken Dialogue Technology


Book Description

Spoken Dialogue Technology provides extensive coverage of spoken dialogue systems, ranging from the theoretical underpinnings of the study of dialogue through to a detailed look at a number of well-established methods and tools for developing spoken dialogue systems. The book enables students and practitioners to design and test dialogue systems using several available development environments and languages, including the CSLU toolkit, VoiceXML, SALT, and XHTML+ voice. This practical orientation is usually available otherwise only in reference manuals supplied with software development kits. The latest research in spoken dialogue systems is presented along with extensive coverage of the most relevant theoretical issues and a critical evaluation of current research prototypes. A dedicated web site containing supplementary materials, code, links to resources will enable readers to develop and test their own systems (). Previously such materials have been difficult to track down, available only on a range of disparate web sites and this web site provides a unique and useful reference source which will prove invaluable.




The Handbook of Multimodal-Multisensor Interfaces, Volume 3


Book Description

The Handbook of Multimodal-Multisensor Interfaces provides the first authoritative resource on what has become the dominant paradigm for new computer interfaces-user input involving new media (speech, multi-touch, hand and body gestures, facial expressions, writing) embedded in multimodal-multisensor interfaces. This three-volume handbook is written by international experts and pioneers in the field. It provides a textbook, reference, and technology roadmap for professionals working in this and related areas. This third volume focuses on state-of-the-art multimodal language and dialogue processing, including semantic integration of modalities. The development of increasingly expressive embodied agents and robots has become an active test bed for coordinating multimodal dialogue input and output, including processing of language and nonverbal communication. In addition, major application areas are featured for commercializing multimodal-multisensor systems, including automotive, robotic, manufacturing, machine translation, banking, communications, and others. These systems rely heavily on software tools, data resources, and international standards to facilitate their development. For insights into the future, emerging multimodal-multisensor technology trends are highlighted in medicine, robotics, interaction with smart spaces, and similar areas. Finally, this volume discusses the societal impact of more widespread adoption of these systems, such as privacy risks and how to mitigate them. The handbook chapters provide a number of walk-through examples of system design and processing, information on practical resources for developing and evaluating new systems, and terminology and tutorial support for mastering this emerging field. In the final section of this volume, experts exchange views on a timely and controversial challenge topic, and how they believe multimodal-multisensor interfaces need to be equipped to most effectively advance human performance during the next decade.




HCI Beyond the GUI


Book Description

As technology expands and evolves, one-dimensional, graphical user interface (GUI) design becomes increasingly limiting and simplistic. Designers must meet the challenge of developing new and creative interfaces that adapt to meet human needs and technological trends. HCI Beyond the GUI provides designers with this know how by exploring new ways to reach users that involve all of the human senses. Dr. Kortum gathers contributions from leading human factors designers to present a single reference for professionals, researchers, and students. - Explores the human factors involved in the design and implementation of the nontraditional interfaces, detailing design strategies, testing methodologies, and implementation techniques - Provides an invaluable resource for practitioners who design interfaces for children, gamers and users with accessibility needs - Offers extensive case studies, examples and design guidelines




Quality Engineering


Book Description

Der Begriff der Qualität und der Gebrauchstauglichkeit hat in der Informations- und Kommunikationstechnik sowie der Informatik eine herausragende Bedeutung. Der Autor führt in diese Thematik ein, indem er zunächst die Fachbegriffe und die Grundlagen der Psychophysik und Psychometrie erläutert. Darauf aufbauend wird der Kreislauf einer menschenorientierten Systementwicklung vorgestellt. Die Messung und Vorhersage von Qualität und Gebrauchstauglichkeit wird anhand von Beispielen veranschaulicht, u. a. für Sprach- und multimodale Dialogsysteme.




9th International Workshop on Spoken Dialogue System Technology


Book Description

This book presents the outcomes of the 9th International Workshop on Spoken Dialogue Systems (IWSDS), “Towards creating more human-like conversational agent technologies”. It compiles and provides a synopsis of current global research to push forward the state of the art in dialogue technologies, including advances in the context of the classical problems of language understanding, dialogue management and language generation, as well as cognitive topics related to the human nature of conversational phenomena, such as humor, empathy and social context understanding and awareness.