PROBABILISTIC SIMULATION OF HUMAN-MACHINE DIALOGUES
K.H. Scheffler and S.J. Young
June 2000
The field of spoken dialogue systems has developed rapidly in recent years. However, optimisation, evaluation and rapid development of systems remain problematic. This paper describes a method of producing a probabilistic simulation of mixed initiative dialogue with recognition and understanding errors. Both user behaviour and system errors are modelled using a data-driven approach, and the quality of the simulations are evaluated by comparing them to real human-machine dialogues.
The simulation system can be used to perform rapid evaluations of prototype systems, thus aiding the development process. It is also envisaged that it will be used as a tool for automation of dialogue design.
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