SYSTEM FOR HANDLING FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS IN A NATURAL LANGUAGE DIALOG SERVICE
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.
2 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
classifying the 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 claim 1 , 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.
4 . 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.
5 . 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.
6 . The method of responding to utterances of claim 1 , wherein each question and answer table includes questions and associated answers.
7 . A computer-readable medium storing a computer program having instructions for controlling a computing device 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.
8 . The computer-readable medium of claim 7 , wherein the instructions further comprise:
classifying the 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.
9 . The computer-readable medium of claim 7 , 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.
10 . The computer readable medium of claim 7 , wherein the identified question and answer output is selected according to a most similar question to the received utterance.
11 . The computer-readable medium of claim 7 , 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.
12 . The computer-readable medium of claim 7 , wherein the question and answer table includes questions and associated answers.
13 . 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.
14 . The computing device of claim 13 , 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.
15 . The computing device of claim 13 , 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.
16 . The computing device of claim 13 , wherein the identified question and answer output is selected according to a most similar question to the received utterance.
17 . The computing device of claim 13 , 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.
18 . The computing device of claim 13 , wherein the question and answer table includes questions and associated answers.