Design of a Multimodal Input Interface for a Dialogue System

In this paper we described our initial work on the development of an embodied conversational agent platform. In the present stage our main focus it is on the development of a multimodal input interface to the system. In this paper we will present an Input and Output Manager block that combines speech, synthetic talking face, text and graphical interfaces. The system support speech input through an ASR and speech output through a TTS, synchronized with an animated face. The graphical and text input are feed through a Text Manger that it is a constituent component of the Input and Output Manager block. All the blocks are tailored for the European Portuguese language. The system is analyzed in the framework of the project Interactive Home of the Future.