The Conversational Interface : Talking to Smart Devices

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the conversational interface, which is becoming the main mode of interaction with virtual personal assistants, smart devices, various types of wearables, and social robots. The book consists of four parts: Part I presents the background to conversational interfaces, examining past and present work on spoken language interaction with computers; Part II covers the various technologies that are required to build a conversational interface along with practical chapters and exercises using open source tools; Part III looks at interactions with smart devices, wearables, and robots, and then goes on to discusses the role of emotion and personality in the conversational interface; Part IV examines methods for evaluating conversational interfaces and discusses future directions. · Presents a comprehensive overview of the various technologies that underlie conversational user interfaces; · Combines descriptions of conversational user interface technologies with a guide to various toolkits and software that enable readers to implement and test their own solutions; · Provides a series of worked examples so readers can develop and implement different aspects of the technologies Front Matter....Pages i-xxii Introducing the Conversational Interface....Pages 1-7 Front Matter....Pages 9-9 The Dawn of the Conversational Interface....Pages 11-24 Toward a Technology of Conversation....Pages 25-50 Conversational Interfaces: Past and Present....Pages 51-72 Front Matter....Pages 73-73 Speech Input and Output....Pages 75-92 Implementing Speech Input and Output....Pages 93-123 Creating a Conversational Interface Using Chatbot Technology....Pages 125-159 Spoken Language Understanding....Pages 161-185 Implementing Spoken Language Understanding....Pages 187-208 Dialog Management....Pages 209-233 Implementing Dialog Management....Pages 235-263 Response Generation....Pages 265-279 Front Matter....Pages 281-281 Conversational Interfaces: Devices, Wearables, Virtual Agents, and Robots....Pages 283-308 Emotion, Affect, and Personality....Pages 309-327 Affective Conversational Interfaces....Pages 329-357 Implementing Multimodal Conversational Interfaces Using Android Wear....Pages 359-376 Front Matter....Pages 377-377 Evaluating the Conversational Interface....Pages 379-402 Future Directions....Pages 403-418 Back Matter....Pages 419-422 "This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the conversational interface, which is becoming the main mode of interaction with virtual personal assistants, smart devices, various types of wearable, and social robots. The book consists of four parts. Part I presents the background to conversational interfaces, examining past and present work on spoken language interaction with computers. Part II covers the various technologies that are required to build a conversational interface along with practical chapters and exercises using open source tools. Part III looks at interactions with smart devices, wearables, and robots, and discusses the role of emotion and personality in the conversational interface. Part IV examines methods for evaluating conversational interfaces and discusses future directions"--Provided by publisher