Workpackage WP0 is dedicated to project management.

Workpackage WP1 is assigned to size the complexity of the application task that will be used to research, develop and evaluate the SLU systems. Defining the architecture of the multisite multilingual SLU system will be addressed along with the communication protocols between the different components. In WP1 criteria and protocols for data collection and annotation will also be formulated.

Workpackages WP2, WP3 and WP4 are devoted to do research on the three main components of the SLU system. The first goal is to augment the output of the ASR with semantic concept tags, thus transforming the initial word lattice input into a very large set of word hypotheses along with their semantic and syntactic annotations (WP2). The second goal is to map the very large and incoherent semantic hypotheses according to semantic relevance models (e.g. using semantic knowledge sources) and/or semantic error modelling (WP3). The third goal is to exploit contextual relevance using dynamic information (e.g. dialog state, user behaviour) and give on-line feedback to the dialog manager. Eventually, contextual information will be exploited in WP2 and WP3, explaining a bidirectional relation between WP4 and both WP2 and WP3. The three workpackages will also address the portability issue along with their research activity.

Workpackage WP5 will deal with the problem of corpora acquisition and annotation following an annotation protocol based on Knowledge Representation at various levels. Various tests are envisaged. Prototypes for new services will be developed and tested by FT integrating modules of the toolkit with existing ASR and dialogue systems. Using the LOQ system, a customer care service using human-machine interaction will be developed by CSI according to WP1 output.

Workpackage WP6 involves dissemination, exploitation and standardization, including IPR protection.

A simplified overview of the project progress is shown in figure below: