A plan-based agent architecture for interpreting natural language dialogue

• Published in: International journal of human-computer studies Vol. 52; no. 4; pp. 583 - 635
• Main Authors: ARDISSONO, LILIANA, BOELLA, GUIDO, LESMO, LEONARDO
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.04.2000
• Subjects: agent modelling; Computers; dialogue processing; Human-computer interaction; Natural language; natural language interpretation; plan and goal recognition; User interface; dialogue processing; plan and goal recognition; agent modelling; natural language interpretation
• ISSN: 1071-5819; 1095-9300
• DOI: 10.1006/ijhc.1999.0347

This paper describes a plan-based agent architecture for modelling NL cooperative dialogue; in particular, the paper focuses on the interpretation of dialogue and on the explanation of its coherence by means of the recognition of the speakers' underlying intentions. The approach we propose makes it possible to analyze an explain in a uniform way several apparently unrelated linguistic phenomena, which have been often studied separately and treated via ad-hoc methods in the models of dialogue presented in the literature. Our model of linguistic interaction is based on the idea that dialogue can be seen as any other interaction among agents: therefore, domain-level and linguistic actions are treated in a similar way. Our agent architecture is based on a two-level representation of the knowledge about acting: at the metalevel, the agent modelling (AM) plans describe the recipes for plan formation and execution (they are a declarative representation of a reactive planner); at the object level, the domain and communicative actions are defined. The AM plans are used to identify the goals underlying the actions performed by an observed agent; the recognized plans constitute the dialogue context, where the intentions of all participants are stored in a structured way, in order to be used in the interpretation of the subsequent dialogue turns.