The authors present findings on the implementation of a dialogue management interface to the Problem Assistant. The dialogue system supports simple mixed?initiative planning interactions in the TRAINS domain, which is still a relatively complex domain involving a number of logical constraints and relations forming the basis for the collaborative problem-solving behavior that drives the dialogue. The book also:

• Presents novel methods for enabling spoken dialogue systems to construct and manage complex tasks and interdependencies with different applications
• Describes late-breaking research on next-generation spoken dialogue systems
• Investigates how spoken dialogue systems may be improved in terms of usability and user friendliness