7th WORKSHOP ON KNOWLEDGE AND REASONING IN PRACTICAL DIALOGUE SYSTEMS

The seventh IJCAI workshop on "Knowledge and Reasoning in Practical Dialogue Systems" will focus on challenges arising when implementing (conversational) dialogue systems for different types of users, such as elderly people and people with special needs. Topics addressed in the workshop include, but are not limited to, the following, focusing on the challenges offered by these novel applications:

Users/Scenarios:

• What are the requirements on dialogue systems or conversational dialogue systems for different types of people, e.g., people with special needs?
• How can we overcome the problems arising for different types of people when they are talking with devices? For example, elderly people interact with devices differently from young people.
• How can we implement dialogue systems in such a way that the target users can also interact with their surroundings?

Technology & Tools:

• How can authoring tools for dialogue systems be developed such that application designers who are not experts in natural language can make use of these systems?
• How can systems be designed to support users with different abilities and ensure universal access?
• What are the best ways of representing language resources for dialogue systems.
• What is the role of ontologies in dialogue systems?

Methodology:

• How can one easily adapt a dialogue system to a new application or user?
• What methods are best suited for design and development of dialogue systems?
• What are the extra constraints and resources of a dialogue system for these users, that might not be present in a speech or text only dialogue system or even traditional multi-modal interfaces?
• What are the most appropriate ways to evaluate dialogue systems for different types of users: what to evaluate and how. How do these systems differ from generic systems?

Other related topics:

• Techniques and algorithms for adaptivity in dialogue systems on various levels, e.g., interpretation, dialogue strategy, and generation.
• Robustness and how to handle unpredictability.
• Architectures and frameworks for adaptive dialogue systems.
• Architecture-specific requirements and development methods.

This is the seventh IJCAI workshop on "Knowledge and Reasoning in Practical Dialogue Systems". The first workshop was organised at IJCAI-99 in Stockholm, the second workshop took place at IJCAI-2001 in Seattle, and the third workshop was held at IJCAI-2003 in Acapulco. The the fourth workshop was held at IJCAI-2005 at Edinburgh. The fifth workshop was held in Hyderabad, India, 2007 and focused on dialogue systems for robots and virtual humans. The sixth workshop was held in Pasadena, CA in 2009, and focussed on challenges of novel applications of practical dialogue systems.

Who should attend

This workshop aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners that work on the development of communication models that support robust and efficient interaction in natural language, both for commercial dialogue systems and in basic research.

It should be of interest also for anyone studying dialogue and multimodal interfaces for different classes of users. The proposed workshop emphasizes practical research, e.g., empirical evaluations of usability, formalization of dialogue phenomena, and development of intelligent interfaces for various applications, including areas such as robotics. As with the previous workshops in the series, we expect a benefit from informal, high quality interaction between those interested and involved in developin practical dialogue systems, including sharing of techniques and experiences. Additionally, the theme of different user-types is expected to also draw on people from User modeling and assistive technologies communities. While there has been a fair amount of recent work in the intersection of these areas, to our knowledge, there has not been a workshop on combining these interest areas to allow sharing of experiences and results in this emerging area.

Workshop format

The workshop will be kept small, a one day workshop with a maximum of 40 participants. Preference will be given to active participants selected on the basis of their submitted papers.

Each paper will be given ample time for discussion, more than what is customary at a conference. We also encourage contributions of a critical or comparative nature that provide fuel for discussion. We also invite people to share their experiences of implementing and coordinating knowledge modules in their dialogue systems, and integrating dialogue components with other applications.

Important dates

• April 16, 2011 - Submission of contributions to workshop
• May 14, 2011 - Workshop paper acceptance notification
• May 28, 2011 - Deadline for final camera ready copy to workshop organizers
• Workshop dates: July 17, 2011

Submissions

• Regular Papers papers of length 6-12 pages, for regular presentation
• Short Papers with brief results, or position papers, of length up to 6 pages.

Submission procedure

Papers should be submitted by web by registering at the following address: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=krpds11

Organizing Committee

Jan Alexandersson (Chair)
German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, DFKI GmbH, Germany
email: janal@dfki.de

Arne Jönsson (Co-Chair)
Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköping University, Sweden
email: arnjo@ida.liu.se

David Traum (Co-Chair)
Institute for Creative Technologies, University of Southern California, USA
email: traum@ict.usc.edu

Ingrid Zukerman (Co-Chair)
Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Australia
email: Ingrid.Zukerman@monash.edu

Programme committee