Title: Dialogue Management in the Talk'n'Travel System

Abstract: A central problem for mixed-initiative dialogue management is coping with user utterances that fall outside of the expected sequence of the dialogue. Independent initiative by the user may require a complete revision of the future course of the dialogue, even when the system is engaged in activities of its own, such as querying a database, etc. This paper presents an event-driven, goal-based dialogue manager component we have developed to cope with these challenges. The dialog manager is explicitly architected for asynchronous input and flexible control, and uses a tree-ordered rule language we have developed that also provides for close coupling with discourse processing. The dialogue manager is implemented as part of Talk'n'Travel, a simulated air travel reservation dialogue system we have developed under the US DARPA Communicator dialogue research program, whose purpose and scope we also briefly summarize.

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