Dear colleagues,

It is our pleasure to invite you to participate in the

IWSDS'2014 Workshop on Spoken Dialog Systems

Situated Dialog

Following the success of IWSDS’2009 (Irsee, Germany), IWSDS’2010 (Gotemba Kogen Resort, Japan), IWSDS’2011 (Granada, Spain), and IWSDS’2012, (Paris, France), the Fifth International Workshop on Spoken Dialog Systems (IWSDS 2014) will be held in Napa, California, US on January 18-20, 2014.

The IWSDS Workshop series provides an international forum for the presentation of research and applications and for lively discussions among researchers as well as industrialists, with a special interest to the practical implementation of Spoken Dialog Systems in everyday applications. 

To date many dialog systems have been developed for well-defined domains most notably information access and simple transactions. As spoken language technologies become more sophisticated more diverse domains have begun to be explored. One direction has been towards systems that are untethered and that do not rely on a clearly demarcated domain. More recently, researchers have begun to explore systems for domains that require a clear awareness of dynamic context and surroundings, aka situated dialog systems. Such domains include robotic and automotive systems, but also systems found in mobile devices and in the cloud.  

Situated dialog represents the next step in creating spoken language systems that can be used by humans as a part of everyday life but presents new research challenges. For example perception becomes significantly more important as the current state of the world plays a role in the interaction; in addition, situated dialog often requires more advanced reasoning capabilities than non-situated systems. Humans might also expect systems to understand and retain new information and be able to accept relatively complex direction. Many of these systems are used in hands-busy eyes-busy situations, where spoken language becomes the principal means of communication. 

We welcome you to the workshop.

Alex Rudnicky (CMU) (Chair)

IWSDS 2014 Program Committee