Senior Researcher

Dr. rer. nat. Florian Nothdurft

PhD Thesis

Topic

How to impart user- and situation-adaptive explanations in dialogue systems

Status

completed

Description

The aim of this thesis is to develop and evaluate different ways to impart explanations in context-aware intelligent systems. One of the main problems of state-of-the art intelligent systems is the lacking of transparency and the resulting shortness of trust in system decisions.

In order to strengthen the users trust and encourage future use of the system, the goal of this thesis is to provide the user with explanations which are created in a user- and situation-adaptive way. The facilitation of transparency by explaining system decisions, the justification of system actions and conclusions or the explanation of used domain knowledge affect the users system acceptance.
Hence, providing and evaluating these explanations in adaptive ways will be one of the main parts of this thesis.

Research Interests

  • Dialogue management modelling
  • Explanation-aware computing

Projects

A Companion-Technology for Cognitive Technical Systems, SFB/Transregio 62, DFG

Embedded Aigaion Query2016

F. Nothdurft, P. Bercher, G. Behnke and W. Minker
User Involvement in Collaborative Decision-Making Dialog Systems
Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop On Spoken Dialogue Systems (IWSDS), Saariselkä, Finland, January 2016
Bibtex

J. Kraus, F. Nothdurft, P. Hock, D. Scholz, W. Minker and M. Baumann
Human After All: Effects of Mere Presence and Social Interaction of a Humanoid Robot as a Co-Driver in Automated Driving
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications Adjunct, pp. 129--134, 2016
Bibtex

S. Ultes, F. Nothdurft, T. Heinroth and W. Minker (Eds.)
Next Generation Intelligent Environments: Ambient Adaptive Systems
Springer International Publishing, In: S. Ultes, F. Nothdurft, T. Heinroth and W. Minker (Eds.) 2nd Edition, 2016
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DOI
Bibtex

F. Nothdurft, S. Ultes and W. Minker
User-Centred Spoken Dialogue Management
Next Generation Intelligent Environments, Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 265--294, 2016
DOI
Bibtex

F. Nothdurft, S. Ultes and W. Minker
User-Centred Spoken Dialogue Management
Next Generation Intelligent Environments, Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 265--294, 2016
DOI
Bibtex

F. Nothdurft, F. Honold and W. Minker
Temporal and Spatial Design of Explanations in a Multimodal System
HCI International 2016, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Toronto, Canada, Series: Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2016
Bibtex

2015

P. Bercher, F. Richter, T. Hoernle, T. Geier, D. Höller, G. Behnke, F. Nothdurft, F. Honold, W. Minker, M. Weber and S. Biundo
A Planning-based Assistance System for Setting Up a Home Theater
Proceedings of the 29th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2015), {AAAI Press}, 2015
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Bibtex

G. Behnke, M. Schiller, D. Ponomaryov, F. Nothdurft, P. Bercher, W. Minker, B. Glimm and S. Biundo
A Unified Knowledge Base for Companion-Systems - A Case Study in Mixed-Initiative Planning
Proceedings of the International Symposium on Companion Technology (ISCT 2015), 2015
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Bibtex

G. Behnke, D. Ponomaryov, M. Schiller, P. Bercher, F. Nothdurft, B. Glimm and S. Biundo
Coherence Across Components in Cognitive Systems - One Ontology to Rule Them All
Proceedings of the 25th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2015), AAAI Press, 2015
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Bibtex

F. Nothdurft, S. Ultes and W. Minker
Finding Appropriate Interaction Strategies for Proactive Dialogue Systems---An Open Quest
Proc. of the 2nd European and the 5th Nordic Symposium on Multimodal Communication 2014, LiU Electronic Press, Tartu, Estonia, pp. 73--80, 2015
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M. Glodek, F. Honold, T. Geier, G. Krell, F. Nothdurft, S. Reuter, F. Schüssel, T. Hoernle, K. Dietmayer, W. Minker, S. Biundo, M. Weber, G. Palm and F. Schwenker
Fusion paradigms in cognitive technical systems for human–computer interaction
Neurocomputing, Vol. 161, pp. 17-37, 2015
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F. Nothdurft and W. Minker
User Involvement in Mixed-initiative Planning
Proceedings of the International Symposium on Companion Technology (ISCT 2015), pp. 37-43, 2015
Bibtex

F. Nothdurft, G. Behnke, P. Bercher, S. Biundo and W. Minker
The Interplay of User-Centered Dialog Systems and AI Planning
Proceedings of the 16th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue (SIGDIAL), Association for Computational Linguistics, Prague, Czech Republic, pp. 344–353, 2015
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2014

F. Nothdurft, F. Honold, K. Zablotskaya, D. Amr and W. Minker
Application of Verbal Intelligence in Dialog Systems for Multimodal Interaction
Series: 10th International Conference on Intelligent Environments, July 2014
Bibtex

F. Nothdurft and W. Minker
Justification and Transparency Explanations in Dialogue Systems to Maintain Human-Computer Trust
Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop On Spoken Dialogue Systems (IWSDS), Springer, Napa, California, USA, January 2014
Bibtex

F. Honold, P. Bercher, F. Richter, F. Nothdurft, T. Geier, R. Barth, T. Hoernle, F. Schüssel, S. Reuter, M. Rau, G. Bertrand, B. Seegebarth, P. Kurzok, B. Schattenberg, W. Minker, M. Weber and S. Biundo
Companion-Technology: Towards User- and Situation-Adaptive Functionality of Technical Systems
10th International Conference on Intelligent Environments (IE 2014), IEEE, pp. 378--381, 2014
Link to Document
DOI
Bibtex

P. Bercher, S. Biundo, T. Geier, T. Hoernle, F. Nothdurft and B. Schattenberg
Plan, Repair, Execute, Explain - How Planning Helps to Assemble your Home Theater.
Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2014), 2014
Bibtex

F. Nothdurft, F. Richter and W. Minker
Probabilistic Human-Computer Trust Handling
Proceedings of the 15th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue (SIGDIAL), Association for Computational Linguistics, Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A., pp. 51--59, 2014
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2013

F. Honold, F. Schüssel, M. Weber, F. Nothdurft, G. Bertrand and W. Minker
Context Models for Adaptive Dialogs and Multimodal Interaction
Series: Intelligent Environments, July 2013
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H. Lang, M. Klepsch, F. Nothdurft, T. Seufert and W. Minker
Are Computers Still Social Actors?
CHI '13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, New York, NY, USA, Paris, France, Series: CHI EA '13, pp. 859–864, 2013
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F. Nothdurft, H. Lang, M. Klepsch and W. Minker
Bases of human-computer trust and explanations
CHI '13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, New York, NY, USA, Paris, France, Series: CHI EA '13, pp. 1737--1742, 2013
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H. Lang, T. Dolpp and F. Nothdurft
How Do Users Solve Software Problems?
HCI International 2013 - Posters’ Extended Abstracts, Springer, Las Vegas, USA, pp. 134–138, 2013
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Bibtex

F. Nothdurft, T. Heinroth and W. Minker
The Impact of Explanation Dialogues on Human-Computer Trust
Human-Computer Interaction. Users and Contexts of Use, Springer, pp. 59--67, 2013
Bibtex

2012

G. Bertrand, F. Nothdurft and W. Minker
"What Do You Want to Do Next?" Providing the User with More Freedom in Adaptive Spoken Dialogue Systems
Intelligent Environments (IE), 2012 8th International Conference on, pp. 290 - 296, June 2012
Bibtex

F. Nothdurft, G. Bertrand, H. Lang and W. Minker
Adaptive Explanation Architecture for Maintaining Human-Computer Trust
36th Annual IEEE Computer Software and Applications Conference, Izmir, Series: COMPSAC, June 2012
Bibtex

T. Heinroth, M. Grotz, F. Nothdurft and W. Minker
Adaptive Speech Recognition for Intuitive Model-based Spoken Dialogues
Proceedings of the Eighth Conference on International Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'12), 2012
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H. Lang and F. Nothdurft
An avatar-based help system for a grid computing web portal
Proceedings of the 14th ACM international conference on Multimodal interaction, 2012
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F. Honold, F. Schüssel, F. Nothdurft and P. Kurzok
Companion technology for multimodal interaction
Proceedings of the 14th ACM international conference on Multimodal interaction, 2012
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H. Lang, M. Klepsch, F. Nothdurft, T. Seufert and W. Minker
The Influence of Proactivity on Interactive Help Agents
SouthCHI 2013, Springer, Maribor, Slovenia, Series: Human Factors in Computing and Informatics, pp. 748--767, 2012
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F. Nothdurft, F. Honold and P. Kurzok
Using explanations for runtime dialogue adaptation
Proceedings of the 14th ACM international conference on Multimodal interaction, 2012
Bibtex

F. Nothdurft and W. Minker
Using Multimodal Resources for Explanation Approaches in Technical Systems
Proceedings of the Eighth Conference on International Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'12), 2012
Bibtex

2011

F. Nothdurft and W. Minker
Explanation Architecture for Companion Systems
2011 IEEE Jordan Conference on Applied Electrical Engineering and Computing Technologies (AEECT 2011), Amman, Jordan, December 2011
Link to Document
Bibtex

G. Bertrand, F. Nothdurft, W. Minker, S. Walter and H. Traue
Adapting Dialogue to User Emotion - A Wizard-of-Oz study for adaptation strategies
Proceedings of the Paralinguistic Information and its Integration in Spoken Dialogue Systems Workshop, Springer, Granada (Spain), September 2011
Bibtex

G. Bertrand, F. Nothdurft, F. Honold and F. Schüssel
CALIGRAPHI -- Creation of Adaptive diaLogues usIng a GRAPHical Interface
35th Annual IEEE Computer Software and Applications Conference, CPS, IEEE, Munich, Series: COMPSAC, pp. 393-400, June 2011
DOI
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F. Honold, F. Schüssel, M. Weber, F. Nothdurft, G. Bertrand and W. Minker
Ein Goal-basierter Ansatz für adaptive multimodale Systeme
Mensch und Computer, 2011
Bibtex

2010

F. Nothdurft, G. Bertrand, T. Heinroth and W. Minker
GEEDI - Guards for Emotional and Explanatory DIalogues
6th International Conference on Intelligent Environments (IE'10), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), July 2010
Link to Document
Bibtex

G. Bertrand, F. Nothdurft, S. Walter, A. Scheck and H. Kessler
Towards investigating effective affective dialogue strategies
International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), Valetta, Malta, May 2010
Link to Document
Bibtex

J. Bidot, S. Biundo, T. Heinroth, W. Minker, F. Nothdurft and B. Schattenberg
Verbal Plan Explanations for Hybrid Planning
24th MKWI related PuK-Workshop: Planung/Scheduling und Konfigurieren/Entwerfen, Göttingen, February 2010
Link to Document
Bibtex

Open Topics

Embedded Aigaion Query

Für weitere offene Bachelor- und Masterarbeiten schickt einfach eine E-Mail an mich.
For further open Bachelor and Master topics just write me an email if you are interested.

In Progress / Completed

Embedded Aigaion Query2016

Master Thesis
Mixed-Initiative Intent Recognition Using Cloud-Based Cognitive Services
2016

2013

Bachelor Thesis
Dynamic Adaptation of Explanations to Verbal Intelligence
March 2013

Master Thesis
Interactive plan generation
2013
Link to Document

Master Thesis
Modeling Uncertainty in User Models
2013

Master Thesis
Using the user's mental model to adapt the dialogue flow
2013

2012

Master Thesis
Realistic user knowledge modelling
2012

2011

Master Thesis
Modular explanation generation
2011

2010

Bachelor Thesis
User Interface for simulating adaptive dialogue strategies
2010

Teaching Assistance

  • Benutzerschnittstellen, SS 2010
  • Benutzerschnittstellen, SS 2011
  • Benutzerschnittstellen, SS 2012
  • Benutzerschnittstellen, SS 2013
  • Dialogue Systems, WS 2009/2010
  • Dialogue Systems, WS 2011/2012
  • Dialogue Systems, WS 2012/2013
  • Dialogue Systems, WS 2013/2014
  • Dialogue Systems, WS 2014/2015

Lectures

Embedded Aigaion Query2015

W. Minker, F. Nothdurft and S. Ultes
User-Adaptive and Intelligent Human-like Dialogue Interaction
Graduate Course within the ERASMUS+ Mobility Programme, Department of Computer Science, University of Granada (Spain), October 2015

F. Nothdurft and W. Minker
On Human-like Dialogue Interaction in Companion Systems
Graduate Course within the ERASMUS/SOCRATES Mobility Programme, Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki (Finland), August 2015

F. Nothdurft and W. Minker
The Problem of User Adaptivity and Intelligent Pro-active System Behaviour
Graduate Course within the ERASMUS/SOCRATES Mobility Programme, Department of Computer Science, University of Tartu (Estonia), February 2015

2014

F. Nothdurft and W. Minker
Finding Appropriate Turn-Taking Strategies for Proactive Dialogue Systems
Graduate Course within the ERASMUS/SOCRATES Mobility Programme, Department of Computer Science, University of Tartu (Estonia), August 2014

F. Nothdurft and W. Minker
User- and Situation-Adaptive Dialogue Systems
Graduate Course within the ERASMUS/SOCRATES Mobility Programme, Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki (Finland), May 2014

2013

H. Hofmann, K. Jokinen, F. Nothdurft, T. Gasanova, M. Sidorov, R. Sergienko, S. Ultes and W. Minker
Selected Topics In Spoken Dialogue Research at Ulm University and Tartu University
Graduate Course within the ERASMUS/SOCRATES Mobility Programme, Institute of Communications Engineering, University of Ulm, November 2013

W. Minker and F. Nothdurft
Spoken Dialogue and Trust in Technical Companion Systems
Graduate Course within the ERASMUS/SOCRATES Mobility Programme, Department of Computer Science, University of Tartu (Estonia), March 2013

W. Minker, F. Nothdurft and S. Ultes
Trust and Quality in Spoken Dialogue Systems
Graduate Course within the ERASMUS/SOCRATES Mobility Programme, Department of Computer Science, University of Granada (Spain), March 2013

2012

W. Minker, H. Lang, A. Schmitt, S. Ultes and F. Nothdurft
Assistive and Adaptive Dialogue Systems
Graduate Course within the ERASMUS/SOCRATES Mobility Programme, Department of Computer Science, University of Granada (Spain), June 2012