Automatic Application Generator Matches User Expectations to System Capabilities

We report on the Application Generator (AG), a system that automatically creates, and then manages, user-customized applications requiring a speech interface. The AG is composed of four modular components: the Automatic Dialogue Generator (ADG), the Profile Manager (PM), the Information and Services Manager (ISM), and the Dialogue Manager (DM). The PM module encodes the user’s intent with a representation of the services and information topics the user is interested in. Thus, the user defines a customized application; both in topical content and presentation format. The ISM module determines the available system resources by searching databases for the requested information and then delivers the information in a format defined by the user. A key feature of the ADG module is that it generates, in a uniform and consistent manner, a finite state dialogue for any task described by a set of tables. Finally, the DM module uses a set of Voice Interface Language (VIL) commands to carry out the actual dialogue session with the user.