Multimodal HALEF: An Open-Source Modular Web-Based Multimodal Dialog Framework

We present an open-source web-based multimodal dialog framework, “Multimodal HALEF”, that integrates video conferencing and telephony abilities into the existing HALEF cloud-based dialog framework via the FreeSWITCH video telephony server. Due to its distributed and cloud-based architecture, Multimodal HALEF allows researchers to collect video and speech data from participants interacting with the dialog system outside of traditional lab settings, therefore largely reducing cost and labor incurred during the traditional audio-visual data collection process. The framework is equipped with a set of tools including a web-based user survey template, a speech transcription, annotation and rating portal, a web visual processing server that performs head tracking, and a database that logs full-call audio and video recordings as well as other call-specific information. We present observations from an initial data collection based on an job interview application. Finally we report on some future plans for development of the framework.