Telephonic communications – Audio message storage – retrieval – or synthesis – Voice activation or recognition
Reexamination Certificate
1997-10-03
2001-02-20
Weaver, Scott L. (Department: 2748)
Telephonic communications
Audio message storage, retrieval, or synthesis
Voice activation or recognition
C704S251000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06192110
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a dialog system and method that interprets a user's requests and implements one or more task objectives.
2. Description of Related Art
There exists a large number of spoken dialog systems whose dialog managers differ in the strategies they employ, in the way they represent and manipulate task knowledge and in how much initiative they take. It is often the case that a user's utterance needs clarification either because the user has supplied too much information or not enough. Existing dialog managers have problems when there are ambiguities in the user's utterances or if the user indicates a desire to implement more than one objective.
A need exists for a dialog manager that infers the user's intention, detects the presence of ambiguities based on the task knowledge, constructs a semantically consistent representation of the user's intention, and logically implements the users objective.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
A dialog manager system and method employs dialog strategies to engage a user in a dialog if necessary in order to implement task objectives. This strategy is based on a prioritized hierarchy of task-types by determining a semantically consistent set of task objectives from a user's input.
The system and method uses an inheritance hierarchy of call or task-types (services). This hierarchy is used by the dialog manager to generate a semantically consistent combination of call or task-types in the form of a Boolean formula. The Boolean formula is then used by the dialog manager to determine if it is necessary to ask clarifying questions, ask for further information required to complete the transaction and determine in what order to ask such questions. This formula is attained through a Boolean formula minimization process and always yields a minimal and consistent combination of call or task-types. Furthermore, a change in the hierarchy does not require changing the dialog manager.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5666400 (1997-09-01), McAllister et al.
patent: 5719921 (1998-02-01), Vysotsky et al.
patent: 5905774 (1999-05-01), Tatchell et al.
Abella Alicia
Gorin Allen Louis
AT&T Corp.
Weaver Scott L.
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