Keywords
Artificial intelligence, Automatic speech recognition, Interactive computer systems, Knowledge management
Abstract
This dissertation presents and evaluates a method of managing spoken dialog interactions with a robust attention to fulfilling the human user’s goals in the presence of speech recognition limitations. Assistive speech-based embodied conversation agents are computer-based entities that interact with humans to help accomplish a certain task or communicate information via spoken input and output. A challenging aspect of this task involves open dialog, where the user is free to converse in an unstructured manner. With this style of input, the machine’s ability to communicate may be hindered by poor reception of utterances, caused by a user’s inadequate command of a language and/or faults in the speech recognition facilities. Since a speech-based input is emphasized, this endeavor involves the fundamental issues associated with natural language processing, automatic speech recognition and dialog system design. Driven by ContextBased Reasoning, the presented dialog manager features a discourse model that implements mixed-initiative conversation with a focus on the user’s assistive needs. The discourse behavior must maintain a sense of generality, where the assistive nature of the system remains constant regardless of its knowledge corpus. The dialog manager was encapsulated into a speech-based embodied conversation agent platform for prototyping and testing purposes. A battery of user trials was performed on this agent to evaluate its performance as a robust, domain-independent, speech-based interaction entity capable of satisfying the needs of its users.
Notes
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Graduation Date
2010
Semester
Summer
Advisor
Gonzalez, Avelino
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
College
College of Engineering and Computer Science
Department
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Format
application/pdf
Identifier
CFE0003230
URL
http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0003230
Language
English
Release Date
August 2010
Length of Campus-only Access
None
Access Status
Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)
Subjects
Dissertations, Academic -- Engineering and Computer Science, Engineering and Computer Science -- Dissertations, Academic
STARS Citation
Hung, Victor C., "Robust Dialog Management Through A Context-centric Architecture" (2010). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1569.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/1569