A timing management method in multimodal dialog systems

Abstract

A new method is proposed which manages timing of individual module actions and the whole system for multimodal dialog systems [Hasegawa et al., Proc. IJCAI, 82–87 (1995)]. Many integration methods proposed so far for dialog systems were based on the flow of information or the dependency of processes. Even when they treated the timing, they described only the time relation among multiple inputs. However, implementation of smooth dialog requires managing time relations between inputs and outputs and time behavior of modules. The proposed method introduces a time management server which manages the time aspect of information flow between modules. Each module is an independent client to the server. It gives an implementation framework to treat interrupt and integration of multiple inputs while maintaining smooth dialog. [Work supported by Real World Computing Program (MITI, Japan).]