Abstract

The goal of the Alparon research group at Delft University of Technology is to develop automated speech processing systems to automate information services now provided by human operators. The current domain is public transport information which is provided in the Netherlands by OVR. Operators working at this organisation provide information concering all Dutch public transport systems, ranging from local bus services to long distance train services.

An important aspect of ASP systems for information retrieval tasks is dialogue management. This report describes a model which will be used to develop and implement such a dialogue management component. The model is based on an analysis of over 5000 dialogues which resulted in a coding scheme well suited for information retrieval dialogues. Besides describing dialogue management issues, an overview of the total system design will be presented in order to provide information concerning the function of dialogue management in the system.