ORION: from on-line interaction to off-line delegation

This paper introduces orion, a conversational system that performs off-line tasks and initiates later contact with a user at a pre-negotiated time. Orion has two major episodes of activity: the enrollment of new tasks and the execution of pending tasks. The task manager periodically checks the pending tasks and updates their status, sending off requests to other servers for information and possibly launching a phone call when a particular task has reached its trigger time. A separate user interface engages in a dialogue with a user to enroll new tasks and/or update existing tasks. Orion is still in an early stage of its development cycle, but it has introduced several interesting new research issues, such as continuous state maintenance and contact verification.