Automated sentence planning in a task classification system

• US 8,019,610 B2
• Filed: 02/26/2009
• Issued: 09/13/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 03/14/2001
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Nuance Communications, Inc. (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Walker, Marilyn A., Rambow, Owen Christopher, Rogati, Monica
• Primary Examiner(s): YEN, ERIC L
• Application Number:
  US12/393,641
• Publication Number:
  US 20090222267A1
• Time in Patent Office: 929 Days
• Field of Search: 704/275, 704/9, 704/270
• US Class Current: 704/275
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/027 Concept to speech synthesisers; Generation of natural phrases from machine-based concepts generation of parameters for speech synthesis out of text G10L13/08
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/1822 Parsing for meaning understanding
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/22 Procedures used during a speech recognition process, e.g. man-machine dialogue
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2201/40 using speech recognition
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2203/355 Interactive dialogue design tools, features or methods
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/4936 Speech interaction details speech recognition per se G10L15/00

Abstract

The invention relates to a task classification system (900) that interacts with a user. The task classification system (900) may include a recognizer (920) that may recognize symbols in the user'"'"'s input communication, and a natural language understanding unit (900) that may determine whether the user'"'"'s input communication can be understood. If the user'"'"'s input communication can be understood, the natural language understanding unit (930) may generate understanding data. The system may also include a communicative goal generator that may generate communicative goals based on the symbols recognized by the recognizer (920) and understanding data from the natural language understanding unit (930). The generated communicative goals may be related to information needed to be obtained from the user. The system may further include a sentence planning unit (120) that may automatically plan one or more sentences based on the communicative goals generated by the communicative goal generator with at least one of the sentences plans being output to the user.

Claims

1. A method for interacting with a user using an automated dialog system, comprising:

generating and storing via a processor communicative goals based on a single communication received from the user, the communicative goals being related to all information needed from the user;

generating a plurality of sentence plans based on the communicative goals and on a dialog history database comprising previously gathered dialogs and a present dialog to yield a plurality of generated sentence plans, wherein each sentence plan of the plurality of generated sentence plans comprises an unordered set of elementary speech acts encoding the communicative goals, each speech act assigned a canonical lexico-structural representation, and wherein each sentence plan of the plurality of sentence plans is a viable and potentially usable prompt in response to the single communication received from the user;

ranking, independent of the user, the plurality of generated sentence plans to yield ranked sentence plans; and

outputting at least one of the ranked sentence plans to yield an output sentence plan, wherein each needed communicative goal of the communicative goals are addressed by the output sentence plan.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

selecting a highest ranked sentence plan to yield a selected sentence plan.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

realizing the selected sentence plan, wherein the realizing step includes applying a set of linguistic rules to the selected sentence plan.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

retrieving a training database that includes a set of learned rules, wherein the ranking step is performed using the set of learned rules.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the dialog history database comprises interaction information related to a set of interactions between the user and the automated dialog system, and wherein the generating a plurality of sentence plans step generates sentence plans using the interaction information.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein interactions between the user and the automated dialog system include nonverbal communications.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the nonverbal communications comprise at least one of gestures, body movements, head movements, non-responses, text, keyboard entries, keypad entries, mouse clicks, DTMF codes, pointers, stylus, cable set-top box entries, graphical user interface entries, and touchscreen entries.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein generating the communicative goals is performed using recognition and understanding data from user communications received by the automated dialog system.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the communicative goals comprise confirming information previously obtained from the user.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

converting at least one of the ranked sentence plans from text to speech.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the method is used in one of a customer care system, a reservation system, parts ordering system, navigation system, information gathering system, and information retrieval system.

12. A method for automatically planning a sentence based on communicative goals, the communicative goals being related to information needed to be obtained from a user, the method comprising:

generating and storing via a processor a plurality of sentence plans based on the communicative goals and on a dialog history database comprising previously gathered dialogs and a present dialog to yield generated sentence plans, wherein each sentence plan of the plurality of generated sentence plans comprises an unordered set of elementary speech acts encoding the communicative goals, each speech act assigned a canonical lexico-structural representation, and wherein each sentence plan of the plurality of generated sentence plans is a viable and potentially usable prompt in response to a single communication from the user;

ranking, independent of the user, the plurality of generated sentence plans;

selecting a highest ranked sentence plan of the plurality of generated sentence plans to yield a selected sentence plan;

realizing the selected sentence plan to yield a realized sentence plan; and

outputting the realized sentence plan to yield an output sentence plan, wherein each needed communicative goal of the communicative goals is addressed by the output sentence plan.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the realizing step includes applying a set of linguistic rules to the selected sentence plan.

14. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

retrieving a training database that includes a set of learned rules, wherein the ranking step is performed using the set of learned rules.

15. The method of claim 12, wherein the dialog history database comprises interaction information related to a set of interactions between the user and the automated dialog system, and wherein generating the plurality of sentence plans uses the interaction information.

16. The method of claim 12, wherein interactions between the user and the automated dialog system include non-verbal communications.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the nonverbal communications comprise at least one of gestures, body movements, head movements, non-responses, text, keyboard entries, keypad entries, mouse clicks, DTMF codes, pointers, stylus, cable set-top box entries, graphical user interface entries, and touchscreen entries.

18. The method of claim 12, wherein the communicative goals are generated using recognition and understanding data from a communication received by the automated dialog system from the user.

19. The method of claim 12, wherein the communicative goals comprise confirming information previously obtained from the user.

20. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

converting the realized sentence plan from text to speech.

21. The method of claim 12, wherein the method used in one of a customer care system, a reservation system, parts ordering system, navigation system, information gathering system, and information retrieval system.

22. A method for automatically planning a sentence in an automated dialog system based on communicative goals related to information needed to be obtained from a user, comprising:

generating and storing via a processor a plurality of sentence plans based on the communicative goals and information related to a set of interactions between the user and the automated dialog system and on a dialog history database comprising previously gathered dialogs and the present dialog to yield generated sentence plans, wherein each sentence plan of the generated sentence plans comprises an unordered set of elementary speech acts encoding the communicative goals, each speech act assigned a canonical lexico-structural representation, and wherein each sentence plan of the generated sentence plans is a viable and potentially usable prompt in response to a single communication from the user;

ranking, independent of the user, the generated sentence plans using a set of learned rules;

selecting a highest ranked sentence plan to yield a selected sentence plan;

realizing the selected sentence plan by applying a set of linguistic rules to yield a realized sentence plan;

converting the realized sentence plan from text to speech to yield a converted sentence plan; and

outputting the converted sentence plan to the user to yield an output sentence plan, wherein each needed communicative goal of the communicative goals is addressed by the output sentence plan.

23. The method of claim 22, wherein the set of interactions between the user and the automated dialog system comprises nonverbal communications.

24. The method of claim 23, wherein the nonverbal communications comprise at least one of gestures, body movements, head movements, non-responses, text, keyboard entries, keypad entries, mouse clicks, DTMF codes, pointers, stylus, cable set-top box entries, graphical user interface entries;

and touchscreen entries.

25. The method of claim 22, further comprising:

generating the communicative goals using recognition and understanding data from a communication received by the automated dialog system from the user.

26. The method of claim 22, wherein the communicative goals comprise confirming information previously obtained from the user.

27. The method of claim 22, wherein the method is used in one of a customer care system, a reservation system, parts ordering system, navigation system, information gathering system, and information retrieval system.