System and dialog manager developed using modular spoken-dialog components

• US 8,473,299 B2
• Filed: 08/29/2008
• Issued: 06/25/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 03/01/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Di Fabbrizio, Giuseppe, Lewis, Charles Alfred
• Primary Examiner(s): Desir, Pierre-Louis
• Assistant Examiner(s): KOVACEK, DAVID M
• Application Number:
  US12/201,423
• Publication Number:
  US 20080319763A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,761 Days
• Field of Search: 704/231, 704/246, 704251-257, 704270-278, 706/11, 706 45- 51, 706 54- 62, 707 1- 10, 379 671- 72, 379 87- 8806, 379/88.13, 379 8816- 8826, 379 9001- 9303
• US Class Current: 704/275
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/00 Handling natural language data speech analysis or synthesis, speech recognition G10L
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/191 Automatic line break hyphenation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/205 Parsing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/35 Discourse or dialogue representation
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/00 Speech synthesis; Text to speech systems
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/06 Creation of reference templates; Training of speech recognition systems, e.g. adaptation to the characteristics of the speaker's voice G10L15/14 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/22 Procedures used during a speech recognition process, e.g. man-machine dialogue
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/28 Constructional details of speech recognition systems
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 21/00 Speech or voice signal processing techniques to produce another audible or non-audible signal, e.g. visual or tactile, in order to modify its quality or its intelligibility G10L19/00 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 21/06 Transformation of speech into a non-audible representation, e.g. speech visualisation or speech processing for tactile aids G10L15/26 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/642 storing speech in digital form
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99932 Access augmentation or optimizing

Abstract

A dialog manager and spoken dialog service having a dialog manager generated according to a method comprising selecting a top level flow controller based on application type, selecting available reusable subdialogs for each application part, developing a subdialog for each application part not having an available subdialog and testing and deploying the spoken dialog service using the selected top level flow controller, selected reusable subdialogs and developed subdialogs. The dialog manager capable of handling context shifts in a spoken dialog with a user. Application dependencies are established in the top level flow controller thus enabling the subdialogs to be reusable and to be capable of managing context shifts and mixed initiative dialogs.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

selecting a top level flow controller that is a recursive transition network flow controller and a finite state model, to yield a selected top level flow controller;

selecting available reusable subdialogs for each application part below the top level flow controller, to yield selected reusable subdialogs;

developing a subdialog for each application part not having an available subdialog, to yield developed subdialogs; and

testing and deploying a spoken dialog service using the selected top level flow controller, the selected reusable subdialogs and the developed subdialogs.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the selected reusable subdialogs are isolated from application dependencies.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the selected top level flow controller, the selected reusable subdialogs and the developed subdialogs interact independent of their decision model.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the selected reusable subdialogs and the developed subdialogs manage mixed-initiative conversations with a user.

5. The method of claim 2, wherein application dependencies are declared outside of the selected reusable subdialogs.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the application dependencies are part of the selected top level flow controller.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the selected reusable subdialogs are selected from a group related to a dialog to obtain the following information:

telephone number, social security number, account number, address, and mixed initiative dialogs.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the selected reusable subdialogs provide information to a user without receiving user input.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein a specific available reusable subdialog within the selected reusable subdialogs is an input subdialog.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the input subdialog further comprises a confirmation component.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein the input subdialog handles silence, rejection, low confidence natural language understanding scores and explicit information in an input dialog with a user.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the specific available reusable subdialog presents a pre-assigned prompt to the user in special circumstances.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the specific available reusable subdialog presents a confirmation prompt to the user when an natural language understanding value is returned with a low confidence score.

14. The method of claim 9, wherein the input subdialog comprises input values are selectable from a list including:

an input prompt, a yes response, a no response, a yes value name, a no value name, a silence category, a reject category, a confidence threshold, and an explicit confirm.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein the available reusable subdialogs are one of a billing subdialog and a credit rule-based flow controllers.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein a state in the recursive transition network flow controller has a subdialog attribute that is associated with a name of a flow controller invoked as a subdialog, to yield an invoked subdialog.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the state in the recursive transition network flow controller having the subdialog attribute further comprises a set of instructions that retrieve values from a parent dialog and a set of values in the invoked subdialog.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the invoked subdialog comprises a set of instructions that returns control to the parent dialog and passes retrieved values from the invoked dialog to the parent dialog upon exiting the invoked subdialog.

19. The method of claim 1, further comprising implementing a local context within a dialog data file associated with a dialog manager.

20. A method comprising:

selecting a top level dialog flow controller that is a recursive transition network flow controller and a finite state model, to yield a selected top level flow controller;

selecting available reusable subdialogs for being invoked by the top level flow controller, to yield selected reusable subdialogs, wherein the selected reusable subdialogs are isolated from application dependencies; and

testing and deploying a spoken dialog service using the selected top level flow controller and selected reusable subdialogs, wherein when a user of the spoken dialog service changes a context of a spoken dialog while in a reusable subdialog, a context shift returns a context shift indication and sets a state in the selected top level flow controller.

21. A method comprising:

selecting a recursive transition network top level flow controller based on an application type, to yield a selected top level flow controller, wherein the recursive transition network top level flow controller is a finite state model and has application-dependent features such that a reusable subdialog operates independent of a decision model of the recursive transition network top level flow controller and decision models of other reusable subdialogs;

determining an application part below the selected top level flow controller, the application part requiring a different flow controller;

selecting available reusable subdialogs for each application part, to yield selected reusable subdialogs; and

testing and deploying a spoken dialog service using the selected top level flow controller and the selected reusable subdialogs.