Method and apparatus for generating sematically consistent inputs to a dialog manager
AssigneeAT&T Corp.
InventorsAlicia Abella, Allen Louis Gorin
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A spoken dialog system is constructed to sufficiently understand a user's response to the open-ended prompt ‘How may I help you?’ in order to route a caller to an appropriate destination, with subsequent processing for information retrieval or call/task completion. In this invention the relationships among the call types are structured into an inheritance hierarchy. Then a dialog manager exploits this hierarchy and the output of a spoken language understanding module to generate a set of semantically consistent task objectives.
Claims30
A method of interpreting a user's input and implementing one or more task objectives, comprising:
- establishing a hierarchy of task objectives, the hierarchy including a plurality of categories of task objectives, each of the task objectives being assigned a different priority;
- identifying one or more of the task objectives from the user's input;
- determining an order of implementation of the identified task objectives based on the priorities assigned to each of the identified task objectives;
- and
- implementing the task objectives based on the determined order of implementation.
A system for interpreting a user's input and interacting with a user in order to implement one or more task objectives, comprising:
- an inheritance hierarchy module that establishes a hierarchy of task objectives, the hierarchy including a plurality of categories of task objectives, each of the task objectives being assigned a different priority;
- an interpretation module that identifies one or more of the task objectives from the user's input;
- and
- a dialog manager that determines an order of implementation of the identified task objectives based on the priorities assigned to each of the identified task objectives.
A system for interpreting a caller's speech and engaging in conversation with a caller in order to implement one or more call routing objectives, comprising:
- an inheritance hierarchy module that establishes a hierarchy of call routing objectives, the hierarchy including a plurality of categories of call routing objectives, each of the call routing objectives being assigned a different priority;
- a Spoken Language Understanding Module that identifies one or more of the call routing objectives from the caller's speech;
- and
- a dialog manager that determines an order of implementation of the identified call routing objectives on the priorities assigned to each of the identified call routing objectives.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.