This paper discusses how to build a system that can engage in a mixed-initiative human-machine spoken dia-logue in which system utterances sometimes overlap with user utterances and vice versa. In the method, a module that incrementally understands user utterances and another module that incrementally generates system utterances work in parallel, and the timing of taking and releasing the dialogue initiative is decided according to the understanding of user utterances and the content of the system utterances. This method enables the system to respond when the user holds the dialogue initiative and is speaking, and enables the system to react to the users bargeins when it holds the initiative and is speaking. An experimental system called DUG-1 is also presented.
Cite as: Nakano, M., Dohsaka, K., Miyazaki, N., Hirasawa, J.-i., Tamoto, M., Kawamori, M., Sugiyama, A., Kawabata, T. (1999) Handling rich turn-taking in spoken dialogue systems. Proc. 6th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (Eurospeech 1999), 1167-1170, doi: 10.21437/Eurospeech.1999-272
@inproceedings{nakano99_eurospeech,
author={Mikio Nakano and Kohji Dohsaka and Noboru Miyazaki and Jun-ichi Hirasawa and Masafumi Tamoto and Masahito Kawamori and Akira Sugiyama and Takeshi Kawabata},
title={{Handling rich turn-taking in spoken dialogue systems}},
year=1999,
booktitle={Proc. 6th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (Eurospeech 1999)},
pages={1167--1170},
doi={10.21437/Eurospeech.1999-272}
}