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Converness: Ontology‐driven conversational awareness and context understanding in multimodal dialogue systems
Author(s) -
Meditskos Georgios,
Kontopoulos Efstratios,
Vrochidis Stefanos,
Kompatsiaris Ioannis
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
expert systems
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.365
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 1468-0394
pISSN - 0266-4720
DOI - 10.1111/exsy.12378
Subject(s) - computer science , ontology , dialog system , domain (mathematical analysis) , human–computer interaction , context (archaeology) , gesture , defeasible estate , modalities , spoken language , natural language processing , interpretation (philosophy) , web ontology language , deixis , artificial intelligence , semantic web , world wide web , dialog box , linguistics , programming language , mathematical analysis , paleontology , philosophy , social science , mathematics , epistemology , sociology , biology
Dialogue‐based systems often consist of several components, such as communication analysis, dialogue management, domain reasoning, and language generation. In this paper, we present Converness, an ontology‐driven, rule‐based framework to facilitate domain reasoning for conversational awareness in multimodal dialogue‐based agents. Converness uses Web Ontology Language 2 (OWL 2) ontologies to capture and combine the conversational modalities of the domain, for example, deictic gestures and spoken utterances, fuelling conversational topic understanding, and interpretation using description logics and rules. At the same time, defeasible rules are used to couple domain and user‐centred knowledge to further assist the interaction with end users, facilitating advanced conflict resolution and personalised context disambiguation. We illustrate the capabilities of the framework through its integration into a multimodal dialogue‐based agent that serves as an intelligent interface between users (elderly, caregivers, and health experts) and an ambient assistive living platform in real home settings.