Silvia Mosso 1 Research Connection 2009: the LUNA project 1 Prague, 7 May 2009 Research Connection 2009 Silvia Mosso LUNA: the Power of Understanding

Silvia Mosso 2 Research Connection 2009: the LUNA project Background A number of existing telephone services offer IVR-like interfaces: System-driven dialogues: require responses with specific words or short sentences proposed by the system Long menus: tedious, and options are difficult to remember. VUIs demand shorter, simpler menus compared to GUIs. Number of steps: an excessive number of levels must often be negotiated before callers achieve desired objective All these aspects increase call duration, and reduce quality of user experience Wouldnt it be better just to tell the service what you want?

Silvia Mosso 3 Research Connection 2009: the LUNA project Objectives The goal is not to achieve human-like interaction, but to allow users to express their needs to an automated system in their own words, and consequently to achieve their goals quickly and accurately. The objective of the LUNA project is the robust, real time understanding of spontaneous speech, well beyond the state of the art, to create advanced-dialogue applications. The solution is a natural language interface

Silvia Mosso 4 Research Connection 2009: the LUNA project The consortium

Silvia Mosso 5 Research Connection 2009: the LUNA project Results Development of a toolkit for multilingual dialogue services –Architecture in 3 levels growing levels of interaction complexity, from call routing and classification to context-sensitive validation in complex, spoken dialogue applications Prototypes in three languages: French, Italian, Polish Validation of the results in different application scenarios Challenges: –The availability of speech corpora is a major issue - data collection and annotation are expensive need for incremental learning algorithms –Spontaneous speech doesnt usually follow the rules of written language; furthermore, a SLU system must be robust to errors introduced by the speech recognizer –Portability across languages and applications is a big challenge Key LUNA innovation: first system of its kind in the Polish language

Silvia Mosso 6 Research Connection 2009: the LUNA project Impact Evolution of human-machine interaction in automated call centers: –To increase the automation rate of telephone services –To shorten call duration, thanks to a reduced waiting time –To overcome the distrust of communicating with machines, and to enhance the user experience Competitive advantage for the industrial partners of the consortium Scientific excellence of European research institutions, results comparable with USA Future research activities : –Integration with robotics – e.g. domestic appliances which can understand spoken language –Cooperative interfaces

Silvia Mosso 7 Research Connection 2009: the LUNA project EU funding benefits EU funding can help to: Encourage cooperation between European technological leaders Create a network between industry and academic institutions Foster interdisciplinary and cross-sector partnerships Facilitate massive investment which generates specific know-how, which would otherwise not be possible for either small-medium companies or universities Stimulate strategic and visionary R&D, thanks to financial support Cultivate new channels for exploitation by industry, early validation and marketing

Silvia Mosso 8 Research Connection 2009: the LUNA project Thank you for listening! Contact us: