Spoken Dialogue Technology : Towards the Conversational User Interface

Spoken Dialogue Technology provides extensive coverage of spoken dialogue systems, ranging from the theoretical underpinnings of the study of dialogue through to a detailed look at a number of well-established methods and tools for developing spoken dialogue systems. The book enables students and practitioners to design and test dialogue systems using several available development environments and languages, including the CSLU toolkit, VoiceXML, SALT, and XHTML+ voice. This practical orientation is usually available otherwise only in reference manuals supplied with software development kits. The latest research in spoken dialogue systems is presented along with extensive coverage of the most relevant theoretical issues and a critical evaluation of current research prototypes. A dedicated web site containing supplementary materials, code, links to resources will enable readers to develop and test their own systems (). Previously such materials have been difficult to track down, available only on a range of disparate web sites and this web site provides a unique and useful reference source which will prove invaluable.

From the reviews:

"McTear’s book provides both a very recommendable entry point for novices or students who want to become familiar with spoken dialogue systems and a good reference manual for practitioners and researchers. The book is attractively presented and structured in a well-thought-out way. It is clearly written and easily understandable. The large number of examples given in the text introduce some variety to the topics." (Johannes Pittermann, Computational Linguistics, Vol. 31 (3), 2005)