Dialogue Management: Questions to Session 3

• How are anaphora treated in COLLAGEN without focus spaces on the focus of attention?

• The text says that if a goal is achived, it will not be popped off the stack as soon as it is completed. (Rich,Sidner 2000, page 5). This FS would be accesible to bind anaphors? (I think it could be an advantadge). If a new focus space is pushed into the stack, it must be put on the finished FS (or achived goal). How and when will be the old FS removed?

• I was wondering about the interfaces between user, agent and application. The agent is supposed to be a framework for interacting with the user, but can the user use the application directly, for example can she press buttons, choose from the menu etc.? Does the agent react to this?
  I think the agent is able to move the cursor around, can he f.ex. load different images in a frame?

• SharedPlans are represented in Collagen by Plan Trees, which are composed of alternating act and recipe nodes. As far as I understood, the recipes are gained from library definitions. So isn't it possible that the Plan Tree may build cyclic structures while it's growing and for this reason get into stuck by an unfinite loop? Are there any precautions concerning this?

• The user of Collagen is not allowed to make arbitrary communications, but only to select from communications expected by the discourse interpretation algorithm. In small systems, like the air travel application, the choices may be easy to predict, but in large systems there may be many ways to carry on. In other systems, the user may give input of any kind and the application can get into stuck. Here the restriction force the user to follow a certain way and he/she may get into stuck. Isn't this a weak point in the concept? Or is this just a first approach?

• Die Frage betrifft TR-2000-38
  Wie behandelt das Collagen-System ungültige Anfragen des Users ? Gibt es eine Kontroll-Einheit, welche in Abhängigkeit zum aktuellen "State", die Ungültigkeit von User-Eingaben oder User-Anforderungen entdeckt und ggf. den User enstprechend korrigiert ?" Beispiel, siehe TR-2000-38 Seite 4 (d) Thermostat Agent
  (5) User says: "1.000 degrees Centigrade"
  (6) Agent: ?

• Ich fände es hilfreich zu klären, was denn genau unter "purpose" (Zweck) und "intention" (Absicht) zu verstehen ist, insbesondere ob bzw. worin qualitative Unterschiede bestehen.