Context-based multimodal input understanding in conversational systems

In a multimodal human-machine conversation, user inputs are often abbreviated or imprecise. Sometimes, only fusing multimodal inputs together cannot derive a complete understanding. To address these inadequacies, we are building a semantics-based multimodal interpretation framework called MIND (Multimodal Interpretation for Natural Dialog). The unique feature of MIND is the use of a variety of contexts (e.g., domain context and conversation context) to enhance multimodal fusion. In this paper we present a semantic rich modeling scheme and a context-based approach that enable MIND to gain a full understanding of user inputs, including those ambiguous and incomplete ones.