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 InformationActionCancellation Conceptual Ontology attribute_value(transaction, servicetype, information) attribute_value(transaction, servicetype, action) attribute_value(transaction, servicetype, cancellation)

Object_Collection Application 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_Collecting Application 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, and cancels a previous request. What do you want?” Asking2: “Say what you want: information, or cancellation” OF

Object_Collecting Application 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 = ( {:ret} | {:ret} | {:ret} ) { }; = ( information ) {return("Information")}; = ( cancel | cancellation) {return("Cancellation")}; = ( [to fix a date for] collection ) {return(”Collection")};

VoiceXML Document Questionattributetype pattern1 Questionattributetype pattern2

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

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 dialogue Related 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