Voice Composer:Voice Composer:A Development Tool for A Development Tool for

Voice ApplicationsVoice Applications

Voice Composer:Voice Composer:A Development Tool for A Development Tool for

Voice ApplicationsVoice Applications

Yi-Xuan Li and Nai-Wei LinYi-Xuan Li and Nai-Wei LinDepartment of Computer Science & Department of Computer Science &

Information EngineeringInformation EngineeringNational Chung Cheng UniversityNational Chung Cheng University

Outline

• Motivations• Related work• The architecture of Voice Composer• The visual programming editor• The program generator• A case study• Conclusion

• Prevalence of mobile voice devices requests rapid development and maintenance of voice applications

• Eye-disabled people requests convenient accesses of information and services via voice devices

• Current development tools for voice applications still have enough rooms for improving

Motivations

Voice XML

Voice XML gateway in

terp

rete

r

ASR

TTSca

ll pro

cesso

r Voice XML document

Internet

PSTN

Database

Voice XMLgateway

Audio

VoIP

WebServer

Dialog Flow

Current Tools

• Voice XML editors– syntax-directed editing

• Dialog wizards– programming with dialog components

• Visual dialog flow editors– visual programming of dialog

components

The Architecture of Voice Composer

Dialog Flow

Editor

Program Generator Simulato

r

Database Integrator

Dialog Component Builder Visual Programming Editor

• Database Integrator is based on ODBC, and maintains database schemas and database connection information

Database Integrator

database connection

database schemas

• Builtin dialog components – start 、 exit 、 PHP 、 SQL 、 Menu 、 link

• User-defined dialog components – leaf components– root components: global variables and ev

ents– subdialog components

Dialog Components

An Example

menu1.article2.music3.exit

read article

play music

menu1.repeat2.exit

press ’#’

press ’#’

menu1.repaet2.exit

• Builtin dialog components used– start 、 exit 、 Menu

• New dialog components– Two leaf components

• Read article• Play music

– A root component• A global event: return to the main menu w

hen pressing ’#’ key

Build New Dialog Components

Dialog Component Builder

Exposed Attributes

AttributesSelected Element

Dialog ComponentTree

Play Music Dialog Component

Attributes

Play Music Dialog Component

Exposed Attributes

New Dialog Components

Dialog Flow Editor

description

exposed attributes

link commands

user-defined

builtin

Editing Root Component

exposed attributes

Editing Main Menu Component

exposed attributes

Editing Read Article Component

exposed attributes

Editing Play Music Component

exposed attributes

Editing Menu I Component

exposed attributes

Editing Menu II Component

exposed attributes

• Translation of builtin dialog components

• Translation of user-defined dialog components

Program Generator

Translation of Builtin Components

Translation of Builtin Components

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="Big5"?><vxml version="2.0" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/vxml"> <menu> <prompt> 這是一個範例測試，選 1 ，聽文章， 選 2 ，聽音樂，選 3 ，離開 </prompt> <choice dtmf="1" next="link-1.vxml"> 聽文章 </choice> <choice dtmf="2" next="link-2.vxml"> 聽音樂 </choice> <choice dtmf="3" next="exit.vxml"> 離開 </choice> </menu></vxml>

Menu_prompt

dtmf-1 string-1

Translation of User-Defined Components

XercesTree

ConversionVoiceXML

PHPConversion

PHP

Dialog

Component

Tree

DOM

Tree

An Example

Dialog Component Tree

Tree Conversion

• Conversion of external variables• Conversion of grammars• Conversion of SQL commands

Conversion of External Variables

cont=”yesno=’yes’”

vxml

formvarname=question

field

filled

grammarprompt

prompt

expr=question

請選擇是或是否

if else

goto

next=A.vxml

goto

next=B.vxml

Grammar_process()

SQL_process()

Conversion of Grammars

Conversion of SQL Commands

Voice XML Generation

Conversion of PHP files

Case Study

Case Study• System analysis: 4 hours• Database construction: 2 hours• User-defined component constructio

n (4): 1 hour• Dialog flow editing (13): 0.5 hour• 124 Voice XML or PHP files are genera

ted

Conclusion• Voice Composer is a development too

l for voice applications• Voice Composer supports visual prog

ramming of dialog flows• Voice Composer supports extension f

or user-defined dialog component construction

• Voice Composer supports extension for database programming