Incorporating Voice Dialogs in a Multi-user Virtual Environment

The applications of 3D virtual environments and voice user interface (VUI) on personal computers has received significant attentions in recent years. Since speech is the most natural way of communication, incorporating VUI into virtual environments can greatly enhance user interaction and immersiveness. Although there have been many researches addressing the issue of integrating VUI and 3D virtual environment, most of the proposed solutions do not provide an effective mechanism for multi-user dialog management. The objective of this research is on providing a solution for VUI integration and dialog management and realizing such a mechanism in a multi-user virtual environment. We have designed a dialog scripting language called XAML-V (eXtensible Animation Markup Language Voice Extension), based on the VoiceXML standard, to address the issues of synchronization between VUI and animation and dialog management for multi-user interaction. We have also realized such a language on a multi-user virtual environment to evaluate the effectiveness of this design.