Communication and manipulation acts in a collaborative dialogue model

Abstract

We present in this chapter a dialogue model and an underlying theory of action that we have developed and tested through an application that simulates a telephone switchboard. The main features of this model are that it rests on a theory of collaborative discourse, and that it allows for the treatment of both communication and manipulation acts. The model thus allows for cooperative human-machine communication in a multimodal context where natural language (in our context typed rather than spoken) is used in combination with direct manipulation.