Ontology-driven VoiceXML Dialogues Generation

Ontology-driven VoiceXML Dialogues Generation

Marta Gatius, Meritxell González

TALP Research Center, Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona

Berlin, 2004

Marta Gatius, Meritxell González

TALP Research Center, Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona

Berlin, 2004

Outline

• Introduction• Using an ontology in the dialogue

design • The system’s messages and grammars• Describing an example• Conclusions

VoiceXML strengths

• Rapid and easy deployment of spoken dialogue systems– Isolation of low level details

• Easy access to internet-data– The same Client/Server architecture used by

many web applications

VoiceXML strengths

• Reusability– Across services

• Subdialogues can be reused– Subdialogues for asking Names, Addresses,

Telephones

– Across languages• When adapting the dialogue system to another

language most part of the dialogues can be reused

VoiceXML strengths

• Multilinguality– Accepting more than one language in a

dialogue – Mixing Catalan and Spanish

• Giving an address:

Plaza “Francesc Macià”

The dialogue design

• The information the application needs from the user

• The information the user needs from the application

• How the information is delivered– The sequences of dialogues– The system help– Error recovering policies

The different types of knowledge involved in the communication

• Conceptual knowledge:– Application knowledge appearing in

communication

• Dialogue knowledge: – Dialogue rules controlling interaction

• Linguistic knowledge: – Linguistic structures expressing the

communication tasks

Conceptual Ontology

Using an ontology

• Representing all application concepts appearing during communication

• Concepts are described by a set of attributes

• Dialogues consist of asking/giving the user values of the conceptual attributes

Task-oriented system-driven dialogues

TRANSACTION

servicetype

Information Action Cancellation

Conceptual Ontology

attribute_value(transaction, servicetype, information)

attribute_value(transaction, servicetype, action)

attribute_value(transaction, servicetype, cancellation)

Object_CollectionApplication

servicetype

Information Collection

Object:Address:Telephone:

Cancellation

Conceptual Ontology

Using an ontology

For clarification dialogues

- Detecting hyperonyns and hypononyms

System: “What type of object you want to throw out?”

User: “An appliance”

System: “What type of appliance”

User: “A refrigerator”

The system’s messages and grammars

• They are generated from the conceptual attributes in the ontology

• The attributes describing concepts are classifyied according to a semantic-syntactico taxonomy of attributes– It has been used for generating Natural

Languages Interfaces from ontologies

The semantic- syntactico taxonomy of attributes

Generalization of the relations between– Application knowledge in the Conceptual

Ontology and linguistic distinctions

– Each class is related to the linguistic structures expressing the consulting and filling of the attributes in the class

The basic attribute taxonomy

• participants :

• being:• possession:• descriptions and relationships

between two or more objects : • related processes:

who_does

is

has

of

does

who_object

what_object

Object_CollectingApplication

servicetype

Information Collection

Noun: “collection”Verb: “fixes a data for collection”

Cancellation

Conceptual Ontology

ATTRIBUTE_CLASSES

OF_TYPE

SERVICE_TYPE

Asking1: “This service gives information, <action_verb> and cancels a previous request. What do you want?”

Asking2: “Say what you want: information, <action_noun> or cancellation”

OF

Object_CollectingApplication

servicetype

Information

Collection

Noun: “collection”Verb: “fixes a data for collection”

Cancellation

Conceptual Ontology

Asking1: “This service gives information, fixes a data for collection and cancels a previous request. What do you want?”Asking2: “Say what you want: information, collection or cancellation”

Obtaining the grammar from the Ontology

public <gramservicetype> = ( <GramInf1>{:ret} | <GramC1>{:ret} | <GramA1>{:ret} ) {<@gramservicetype $ret>};

<GramInf1> = ( information ) {return("Information")};

<GramC1> = ( cancel | cancellation) {return("Cancellation")};

<GramA1> = ( [to fix a date for] collection ) {return(”Collection")};

VoiceXML Document<form id="formATTRNAME"> <field name="attrATTRNAME"> <grammar src="file://grammars/gramATTRNAME.sjv"

type="application/x-jsgf-flx"/> <prompt count = 1> Questionattributetype pattern1 </prompt> <prompt count = 2> Questionattributetype pattern2 </prompt> </field></form>

VoiceXML Document<form id="formservicetype"> <field name="attrservicetype"> <grammar src="file://grammars/gramservicetype.sjv"

type="application/x-jsgf-flx"/> <prompt count = 1> “This service gives information, fixes a data for collection

and cancels a previous request. What do you want?” </prompt> <prompt count = 2> “Say what you want: information, collection or cancellation” </prompt></field></form>

HOPS Enabling an Intelligent Natural Language Based Hub

for the Deployment of Advanced Semantically Enriched

Multi-channel Mass-scale Online Public Services

HOPS is a three-year project focused on the deployment of advanced ICT enabled “voice-enabled front-end public platforms” in Europe

permitting access for European citizens to their nearest Public Administration.

Technologies

• Voice XML Portals

• Natural Language Processing

• Semantic Web Technologies

Large Objects Collection Service

• Studying the information needed for the application

• Studying the information appearing in conversation

• The experience of the human operator using the service

• Studying the examples collected from the real dialogues

Large Objects Collection Service

Problematic issues in dialogueRelated to the domain knowledge: the

classification of the object type as • green point object: pollutant or recyclable

– i.e. Fridges, ruins

• not green point object: furniture, electrical appliances– i.e. TV, washing machines

Inconsistencies in the samples

Large Objects Collection Service

Problematic issues in dialogue

– Personal data• Names. It is a difficult task and not

completly necessary.

• Address. Its difficult.

– Related to the language proficiency: • How to ask the application information in a

friendly way in English

Conclusions

• Main contribution: – Proposing an organization of the

knowledge involved in communication that improves •The development process of the

VoiceXML dialogue systems •The functionality of the resulting

dialogue systems

Proposing a reusable organization

• The Conceptual Ontology– It provides a general framework for

representing application concepts

• The syntactic-semantic taxonomy of attributes– Capturing the relations between

application concepts and their linguistic realization

Conclusions