A voice-controlled automatic telephone switchboard and directory information system

In this paper, we present the Philips automatic telephone switchboard and directory information system PADIS. PADIS understands natural-language requests in fluently spoken German. The system offers telephone, fax, and room numbers, email addresses, private phone numbers, and direct call completion. A setup with a 500-entry database is currently in a field test in our research laboratory and has shown a success rate of 90%. This paper describes the system architecture and its components, and presents experiences as well as results from the field test.