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CMU Dialog systems

The following is an example dialog from the CMU Darpa Communicator. Communcator is a automated telephone based dialog systems for booking flight information. The following dialog is an actual dialog, but the agent side has been replaced with synthesizer output using the Limited Domain Synthesis techniques as described in the FestVox project

When the limited domain synthesizer fails, it defaults to using the diphone synthsizer (which is built from the same speaker), though doesn't happen in this example. Note although selections in the limited doamin synthesizer do use then word name as an index this is different from simple word and phrase concatenation as the join will often ocurr within word, as that's is determined to be the best join point. If you listen carefully there are occasionally errors in the synthesis, the word "air" in the final email address is very short, and some joins are not very smooth. However the quality of synthesis is far superior than standard text to speech.

The voices was constructed from 630 in-domain utterances selected by looking at the most frequent utterances made by the communciator over a 3 month period, plus others to ensure word coverage of the domain.

The complete dialog as one waveform (in 8KHz riff wavefile) or as an mp3 file

000 S: Hello. Welcome to the Carnegie Mellon Communicator. Are you a registered user?  
U: "HI THIS IS ALEX RUDNICKY I'D LIKE TO FLY TO CHARLESTON PLEASE" 
001 S: Hello, dr Rudnicky, i'm glad to hear from you again. You can ask me for help at any time. You can fly to charleston in south carolina or charleston in west virginia.  
U: "SOUTH CAROLINA" 
002  S: a flight to charleston. departing pittsburgh on what day   
U: "ON THE FIFTEENTH " 
003 S(1): I'm sorry. I must have misheard the date.. a flight on Tuesday, February fifteenth. okay what day would you be traveling?   
U: "ON MARCH FIFTEENTH" 
004 S(1): traveling on Wednesday, March fifteenth.  
S(2): One Moment Please... ... Let's see ... ... ... ... flights from pittsburgh to charleston ... ... ... ... ... if you'll just hold on, this shouldn't take too long ... ... ... ... ... Gosh, the network has been slow all day ... ... ... I'm glad you called, though ... ... ... ... I'm not sure how long this will take ... ... ... This has been a long day, but I'm glad you called ... ... hummmmm... this is taking longer than usual ... ... .... ... i wonder if something is wrong ... ... ... ... ... i'll bet the network is down again!  
S(3): i have a nonstop on US Airways departing Pittsburgh at eleven thirty five a.m. , arrives Charleston at one thirty five p.m. .  
U: "HOW 'BOUT SOMETHING LATER" 
005 S: the flight after that departs Pittsburgh at two ten p.m. arriving in Charleston at four ten p.m. Is that OK?  
U: "OKAY THAT'S FINE" 
006 S: Will you return to pittsburgh from charleston?  
U: "YES ON SATURDAY " 
007 S(1): traveling on Saturday, March eighteenth.  
S(2): okay i have a nonstop on US Airways departing Charleston at eleven oh five a.m. arrive Pittsburgh at one thirteen p.m. Do you want to take that?  
U: "THAT'S PERFECT I'LL TAKE IT " 
008 S: Do you need any hotel or car reservations?  
U: "YES I'LL NEED A CAR " 
009 S: no hotels. Do you need a car in charleston?  
U: "YES PLEASE" 
009 S: I've made a request for a car with Avis in charleston. Do you want a summary of your trip?  
U: "YES PLEASE" 
010 S: Your first flight, is a US Airways flight 4072 leaving pittsburgh at two ten P.M. on Wednesday, March fifteenth, arriving in charleston at four ten P.M.. Then, the next flight is a US Airways flight 4120 leaving charleston at eleven oh five A.M. on Saturday, March eighteenth, arriving in pittsburgh at one thirteen P.M. . I've made no hotel reservations for your trip. I've requested a rental car in charleston. Are you satisfied with this itinerary?  
U: "YES " 
011 S: Mail sent to air@CS.CMU.EDU. Thank you for using the Carnegie Mellon Communicator. Please tell me any comments. When you're finished, just hang up. 

CMU/LTI This page is maintained by Alan W Black (awb@cs.cmu.edu)
Festvox is a project within LTI at Carnegie Mellon University