System and method of providing an automated data-collection in spoken dialog systems

A system for gathering data for use in training a spoken dialog system, the system comprising:

• means for obtaining task-independent training data;
• means for presenting an initial prompt to a user;
• means for recognizing a received user utterance using an automatic speech recognition engine;
• means for classifying the recognized user utterance using a spoken language understanding module;
• means for prompting the user if the recognized user utterance is understood or classifiable with a confidence more than a predetermined acceptance threshold;
• means for re-prompting the user if the recognized user utterance is not understood or classifiable to a predetermined acceptance threshold;
• and
• means for transferring the user to a human if the recognized user utterance is not classifiable to a predetermined rejection threshold, wherein the received and classified user utterance is used for training the spoken dialog system.

A system for gathering data for use in training a spoken dialog system, the system comprising:

• a module configured to determine task-independent training data from a library formed using data from previous applications;
• a module configured to present an initial prompt to a user;
• a module configured to recognize a received user utterance using an automatic speech recognition engine;
• a module configured to classify the recognized user utterance using a spoken language understanding module;
• a module configured to re-prompt the user if the recognized user utterance is not understood or classifiable to a predetermined acceptance threshold;
• and
• a module configured to transfer the user to a human if the recognized user utterance is not classifiable to a predetermined rejection threshold, wherein the received and classified user utterance is used for training the spoken dialog system.

A computer-readable medium storing instructions for controlling a computing device to gather data for use in training a spoken dialog system, the instructions comprising the steps:

• managing a library of training data obtained from previous applications;
• presenting an initial prompt to a user;
• recognizing a received user utterance using an automatic speech recognition engine;
• classifying the recognized user utterance using a spoken language understanding module;
• if the recognized user utterance is not understood or classifiable to a predetermined acceptance threshold, then re-prompting the user;
• if the recognized user utterance is not classifiable to a predetermined rejection threshold, then transferring the user to a human, wherein the received and classified user utterance is used for training the spoken dialog system.

A method of gathering data for use in training a spoken dialog system, the method comprising:

• presenting an initial prompt to a user;
• recognizing an utterance using an automatic speech recognition (ASR) module;
• classifying the utterance using a generic spoken language understanding (SLU) module;
• determining whether the recognition and classification meet a threshold;
• if the recognition and/or classification does not meet the threshold, then either re-prompting the user or transferring the user to a human agent;
• and
• if the recognition and/or classification does meet the threshold, then routing the call according to a call-type associated with the classification.