CHAT To Your Destination

In the past few years, we have been developing a robust, wide-coverage, and cognitive load-sensitive spoken dialog interface, CHAT (Conversational Helper for Automotive Tasks). New progress has been made to address issues related to dynamic and attention-demanding environments, such as driving. Specifically, we try to address imperfect input and imperfect memory issues through robust understanding, knowledge-based interpretation, flexible dialog management, sensible information communication, and user-adaptive responses. In addition to the MP3 player and restaurant finder applications reported in previous publications, a third domain, navigation, has been developed, where one has to deal with dynamic information, domain switch, and error recovery. Evaluation in the new domain has shown a good degree of success: including high task completion rate, dialog efficiency, and improved user experience.