An ISU dialogue system exhibiting reinforcement learning of dialogue policies

We demonstrate a multimodal dialogue system using reinforcement learning for in-car scenarios, developed at Edinburgh University and Cambridge University for the TALK project. This prototype is the first "Information State Update" (ISU) dialogue system to exhibit reinforcement learning of dialogue strategies, and also has a fragmentary clarification feature. This paper describes the main components and functionality of the system, as well as the purposes and future use of the system, and surveys the research issues involved in its construction. Evaluation of this system (i.e. comparing the baseline system with handcoded vs. learnt dialogue policies) is ongoing, and the demonstration will show both.