Speech act-based voice XML dialogue apparatus for controlling dialogue flow and method thereof

• US 20070129950A1
• Filed: 10/10/2006
• Published: 06/07/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 12/05/2005
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
• Original Assignee: Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
• Inventors: Kim, Sang Hun, Park, Kyoung Hyun
• Application Number:
  US11/545,159
• Publication Number:
  US 20070129950A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/270.100
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/22 Procedures used during a speech recognition process, e.g. man-machine dialogue

Abstract

Provided is a voice dialogue interface field that is related to a speech act-based voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) dialogue apparatus for controlling a dialogue flow and a method thereof. The speech act-based VoiceXML dialogue apparatus includes a dialogue manager for performing dialogue management by extracting speech act information from a speaker'"'"'s speech; and a VoiceXML interpreter for performing a dialogue control by determining response speech act information based on the speech act information and an associated speech act-based VoiceXML document.

Claims

1. A speech act-based voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) dialogue apparatus, comprising:

a dialogue manager for performing dialogue management by extracting speech act information from a speaker'"'"'s speech; and

a VoiceXML interpreter for performing a dialogue control by determining response speech act information based on the speech act information and an associated speech act-based VoiceXML document.

2. The speech act-based VoiceXML dialogue apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the dialogue manager comprises:

a speech recognition unit for recognizing the speaker'"'"'s speech;

a dialogue management unit for parsing the recognized speech data to extract speech act information therefrom and generating a response sentence on the basis of the response speech act information transferred from the VoiceXML interpreter; and

a voice synthesis unit for synthesizing the response sentence and responding to the speaker.

3. The speech act-based VoiceXML dialogue apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising:

Scenario2DDML module for generating a DDML document corresponding to a dialogue scenario extracted from a dialogue database (DB); and

DDML2VoiceXML module for converting the DDML document into a speech act-based VoiceXML document and storing it in a web server.

4. The speech act-based VoiceXML dialogue apparatus according to claim 3, further comprising a DDML editor for editing the DDML document.

5. The speech act-based VoiceXML dialogue apparatus according to claim 3, wherein the VoiceXML interpreter loads the associated speech act-based VoiceXML document from the web server and determines the response speech act information based on the associated speech act-based VoiceXML document

6. The speech act-based VoiceXML dialogue apparatus according to claim 3, wherein the DDML document represents a dialogue flow on a state basis, said state including a speech object, speech act information, and a target.

7. A speech act-based VoiceXML dialogue method, comprising the steps of:

(a) recognizing a speaker'"'"'s speech and outputting the recognized result;

(b) parsing the recognized speech and extracting speech act information therefrom;

(c) loading a speech act-based VoiceXML document corresponding to the extracted speech act information from a web server and generating response speech act information based on the speech act information and the speech act-based VoiceXML document; and

(d) generating a response sentence corresponding to the response speech act information, synthesizing the sentence, and responding to the speaker.

8. The method according to claim 7, further comprising the steps of:

extracting a dialogue scenario from a dialogue database (DB) in a specific field in off-line mode;

extracting speech act information from the extracted dialogue scenario and generating the DDML document that reflects multiple dialogue flows; and

converting the DDML document into the speech act-based VoiceXML document and storing the document in the web server.

9. The method according to claim 8, further comprising the step of editing the DDML document.