Finite States Techniques for Dialogue Processing

Abstract:
A common technique in dialogue processing is the use of a kind of FSA to specify the dialogues that a sysem can handle. The SaarbrÃ¼cken Speaking Elevator mentioned earlier (» Speaking Elevator: Examples of Required Behaviour) is based on such a FSA. We will now introduce FSA techniques for dialogue processing and then discuss the elevator's underlying FSA.

FSA-based Dialogue Systems
We assume that the reader is familiar with the basics of finite state technology. We now discuss the application of these methods to dialogue processing.

Extending FSA
We will see what a programmer has to do in order to extend a FSA dialogue manager to encapsulate the dialogue characteristics considered in » General Dialogue characteristics.

An In-depth Look at the Speaking Elevator
This section presents the actual dialogue engine of the Saarbrücken CL department's speaking elevator.

Dialogue Characteristic and Extension of the Elevator
We now present a small evaluation of the elevator system. Remember the dialogue characteristics we introduced in the beginning of this course (» General Dialogue characteristics).

Summary and Outlook
So what can we say in general about the pros and cons of finite state techniques for dialogue processing? Let's sum up the conclusions we can draw from our case study of the speaking elevator, its capabilities and the perspectives of extending them.

Finite States Techniques for Dialogue Processing

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