Interruption, Resumption and Domain Switching in In-Vehicle Dialogue

The use of dialogue systems in vehicles raises the problem of making sure that the dialogue does not distract the driver from the primary task of driving. Earlier studies have indicated that humans are very apt at adapting the dialogue to the traffic situation and the cognitive load of the driver. The goal of this paper is to investigate strategies for interrupting and resuming in, as well as changing topic domain of, spoken human-human in-vehicle dialogue. The results show a large variety of strategies being used, and indicate that the choice of resumption and domain-switching strategy depends partly on the topic domain being resumed, and partly on the role of the speaker (driver or passenger). These results will be used as a basis for the development of dialogue strategies for interruption, resumption and domain-switching in the DICO in-vehicle dialogue system.