Organization, communication, and control in the GALAXY-II conversational system

Galaxy-ii is the designated initial common architecture for the DARPA Communicator project in the U.S. Its key feature is the ability to control system integration via a run-time executable scripting language. This paper describes our experience in developing complex systems based on the galaxy-ii framework. Our current system consists of four domains and two languages (English and Mandarin). Users can interface with the system in both displayful and displayless modes. Users can switch freely among the various domains in a single conversation, and multiple users can access the system in simultaneous conversations. In addition to the hub script that controls live interaction with users, we have also con gured many other hub scripts that permit various batchmode runs, including the capability to reprocess log les through improved versions of the system to measure progress. The hub scripting capability has greatly accelerated our pace of system development, and has allowed us to con gure considerably more complex systems than we would have previously envisioned.