Halpin : a Multimodal and Conversational System for Information Seeking on the World Wide Web

Giving to computers the ability to talk and understand a natural language conversation is a major field of research. We have developed the HALPIN (Hyperdialogue avec un Agent en Langage Proche de l’Interaction Naturelle) system to implement our multimodal conversational model for information retrieval. This dialogue-oriented interface allows the access to the INRIA's database (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique, 83297 documents available), on the internet, in a natural language (NL) way, and gives its oral responses via usual browsers. The results of the first experiments show that the Halpin system provides some interesting dialogues (in particular with the beginners), according to the user’s goals and skills, that leads to information retrieval success, while searches with the original user interface (traditional web form) failed.