A robust and efficient three-layered dialogue component for a speech-to-speech translation system

We present the dialogue component of the speech-to-speech translation system VERBMOBIL. In contrast to conventional dialogue systems it mediates the dialogue while processing maximally 50% of the dialogue in depth. Special requirements (robustness and efficiency) lead to a 3-layered hybrid architecture for the dialogue module, using statistics, an automaton and a planner. A dialogue memory is constructed incrementally.