System and method of spoken language understanding in a spoken dialog service
View Patent ↗A voice-enabled help desk service is disclosed. The service comprises an automatic speech recognition module for recognizing speech from a user, a spoken language understanding module for understanding the output from the automatic speech recognition module, a dialog management module for generating a response to speech from the user, a natural voices text-to-speech synthesis module for synthesizing speech to generate the response to the user, and a frequently asked questions module. The frequently asked questions module handles frequently asked questions from the user by changing voices and providing predetermined prompts to answer the frequently asked question.
1. A method of responding to user utterances in a spoken dialog service, the method comprising:
receiving a user utterance;
identifying a question and an answer selected from a question and answer table based on a similarity computation that calculates a similarity between the user utterance and at least one question in the question and answer table and a set of words in the user utterance that are not found in a set of unique words in the question and answer table; and
presenting an answer to the user utterance from the identified question and answer, wherein the identified question and answer is output to a dialog management module and wherein the similarity computation further comprises:
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wherein the term faq ji represents the questions in the question and answer table and the term q i represents the user utterance and c is the set of words.
2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
classifying recognized text associated with the user utterance; and
selecting the question and answer table from a plurality of question and answer tables according at least to the classified text.
3. The method of responding to utterances in a spoken dialog service of claim 1 , wherein the identified question and answer output is selected according to a most similar question to the received utterance.
4. The method of responding to utterances of claim 1 , wherein the answer is selected from the selected question and answer table as being associated with a question that is the most similar to the received utterance.
5. The method of responding to utterances of claim 1 , wherein each question and answer table includes questions and associated answers.
6. A computer-readable medium storing a computer program having instructions for controlling a computing device associated with a spoken dialog service to perform the steps of:
receiving a user utterance;
identifying a question and an answer selected from a question and answer table based on a similarity computation that calculates a similarity between the user utterance and at least one question in the question and answer table and a set of words in the user utterance that are not found in a set of unique words in the question and answer table; and
presenting an answer to the user utterance from the identified question and answer, wherein the instructions further comprise:
outputting the identified question and answer to a dialog management module and wherein the similarity computation further comprises:
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wherein the term faq ji represents the questions in the question and answer table and the term q i represents the user utterance and c is the set of words.
7. The computer-readable medium of claim 6 , wherein the instructions further comprise:
classifying recognized text associated with the user utterance; and
selecting the question and answer table from a plurality of question and answer tables according at least to the classified text.
8. The computer readable medium of claim 6 , wherein the identified question and answer output is selected according to a most similar question to the received utterance.
9. The computer-readable medium of claim 6 , wherein the answer is selected from the selected question and answer table as being associated with the question that is most similar to the received utterance.
10. The computer-readable medium of claim 6 , wherein the question and answer table includes questions and associated answers.
11. A computing device for responding to utterances in a spoken dialog service, the computing device comprising:
a module configured to receive a user utterance;
a module configured to identify a question and answer selected from a question and answer table based on a similarity computation that calculates a similarity between the user utterance and at least one question in the question and answer table, a set of words in the user utterance that are not found in a set of unique words in the question and answer table; and
a module configured to present an answer to the user from the identified question and answer, wherein the identified question and answer is output to a dialog management module, and wherein similarity computation further comprises:
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wherein the term faq ji represents the questions in the question and answer table and the term q i represents the user utterance and c is the set of words.
12. The computing device of claim 11 , further comprising:
a module configured to classify recognized text associated with the user utterance; and
a module configured to select the question and answer table from a plurality of question and answer tables according at least to the classified text.
13. The computing device of claim 11 , wherein the identified question and answer output is selected according to a most similar question to the received utterance.
14. The computing device of claim 11 , wherein the answer is selected from the selected question and answer table as being associated with a question that is the most similar to the received utterance.
15. The computing device of claim 11 , wherein the question and answer table includes questions and associated answers.