Spoken dialogue interface apparatus and method

• US 20060184370A1
• Filed: 02/07/2006
• Published: 08/17/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 02/15/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
• Inventors: Lee, Jae-won, Kwak, Byung-kwan
• Granted Patent: US 7,725,322 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/275
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/1822 Parsing for meaning understanding

Abstract

The spoken dialogue interface apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention includes a speech recognition module for recognizing a human'"'"'s speech from a sound signal; a user intention interpretation module for extracting a sentence from the recognized speech and interpreting a user'"'"'s intention based on the sentence; a user intention selection module for determining user intention using the interpreted user'"'"'s intention and a predetermined domain action frame; and a system response generation module for generating a system response sentence corresponding to the selected user intention, wherein the domain action frame includes service information which the user requests, and parameter information which is used to perform a service, and the domain action frame is constructed to have a hierarchical tree structure.

Claims

1. A spoken dialogue interface apparatus, comprising:

a speech recognition module for recognizing a human'"'"'s speech from a sound signal;

a user intention interpretation module for extracting a sentence from the recognized speech and interpreting a user'"'"'s intention based on the sentence;

a user intention selection module for determining user intention using the interpreted user'"'"'s intention and a predetermined domain action frame; and

a system response generation module for generating a system response sentence corresponding to the selected user intention;

wherein the domain action frame includes service information which the user requests, and parameter information which is used to perform a service, and the domain action frame is constructed to have a hierarchical tree structure.

2. The spoken dialogue interface apparatus as set forth in claim 1, wherein the system response sentence is set in the domain action frame.

3. The spoken dialogue interface apparatus as set forth in claim 2, wherein, when a corresponding system response sentence does not exist in the domain action frame, the system response generation module generates the system response sentence with reference to a domain action frame which exists in an upper layer of the hierarchical tree structure.

4. The spoken dialogue interface apparatus as set forth in claim 1, further comprising a speech synthesis module for transforming the system response sentence generated by the system response generation module into speech and outputting it to the user.

5. The spoken dialogue interface apparatus as set forth in claim 1, further comprising a system intention selection module for performing a service based on the user intention selected by the user intention selection module and transferring performance results;

wherein the system response generation module generates a system response sentence corresponding to the transferred results.

6. The spoken dialogue interface apparatus as set forth in claim 5, wherein the system response sentence is set in the domain action frame.

7. The spoken dialogue interface apparatus as set forth in claim 6, wherein, when a corresponding system response sentence does not exist in the domain action frame, the system response generation module generates the system response sentence with reference to a domain action frame which exists in an upper layer of the hierarchical tree structure.

8. The spoken dialogue interface apparatus as set forth in claim 5, further comprising a speech synthesis module for transforming the system response sentence generated by the system response generation module into speech and outputting it to the user.

9. A spoken dialogue interface method, comprising the steps of:

recognizing a human'"'"'s speech from a sound signal;

extracting a sentence from the recognized speech and interpreting the user'"'"'s intention based on the sentence;

determining the user intention using the interpreted user'"'"'s intention and a predetermined domain action frame; and

generating a system response sentence corresponding to the selected user intention;

wherein the domain action frame includes service information which the user requests, and parameter information which is used to perform a service, and the domain action frame is constructed to maintain a hierarchical tree structure.

10. The spoken dialogue interface method as set forth in claim 9, wherein the system response sentence is set in the domain action frame.

11. The spoken dialogue interface method as set forth in claim 10, further comprising the step of generating the system response sentence with reference to a domain action frame, which exists in an upper layer of the hierarchical tree structure, when a corresponding system response sentence does not exist in the domain action frame.

12. The spoken dialogue interface method as set forth in claim 9, further comprising the step of transforming the system response sentence generated by the system response generation module into speech and outputting it to the user.

13. The spoken dialogue interface method as set forth in claim 9, wherein the generating step comprises the steps of;

performing a service based on the user intention selected by the user intention selection module and transferring performance results; and

generating a system response sentence corresponding to the transferred results.

14. The spoken dialogue interface method as set forth in claim 13, wherein the system response sentence is set in the domain action frame.

15. The spoken dialogue interface method as set forth in claim 14, further comprising the step of generating the system response sentence with reference to the domain action frame, which exists in an upper layer in the hierarchical tree structure, when a corresponding system response sentence does not exist in the domain action frame.

16. The spoken dialogue interface method as set forth in claim 13, further comprising the step of transforming the system response sentence generated by the system response generation module into speech and outputting it to the user.