Evaluation and Optimisation of Incremental Processors

Abstract

Incremental spoken dialogue systems, which process user input as it unfolds, pose additional engineering challenges compared to more standard non-incremental systems: Their processing components must be able to accept partial, and possibly subsequently revised input, and must produce output that is at the same time as accurate as possible and delivered with as little delay as possible. In this article, we define metrics that measure how well a given processor meets these challenges, and we identify types of gold standards for evaluation. We exemplify these metrics in the evaluation of several incremental processors that we have developed. We also present generic means to optimise some of the measures, if certain trade-offs are accepted. We believe that this work will help enable principled comparison of components for incremental dialogue systems and portability of results.