RoBoDiMa: a dialog object based natural language speech dialog system

The paper describes a speech dialog system toolkit currently being developed at Bosch's speech research group. The Robert Bosch Dialog Manager (RoBoDiMa) is capable of handling natural language input in a robust way. Whereas dialog functions, such as disambiguation, negotiation, relaxation, etc., are intrinsic, internal parts of the dialog system software, a developer can easily configure a custom dialog by entering world knowledge in the form of dialog objects and actions. The toolkit operates in a frame-based rather than state-based manner, so a dialog is not limited to hard-coded flow and conditions but rather can evolve from the developer's context description and goals.