This note considers estimation of the mean of a multivariate Gaussian distribution with known variance within the Minimum Message Length (MML) framework. Interestingly, the resulting MML estimator exactly coincides with the positive-part James-Stein estimator under the choice of an uninformative prior. A new approach for estimating parameters and hyperparameters in general hierarchical Bayes models is also presented.

In this paper we describe Scusi? , the speech interpretation component of a spoken dialogue module designed for an autonomous robotic agent. Scusi? postulates and maintains multiple interpretations of the spoken discourse, and employs a probabilistic formalism to assess and rank hypotheses regarding the meaning of spoken utterances. These constituents in combination enable Scusi? to cope gracefully with ambiguity and speech recognition errors. The results of our evaluation are encouraging, yielding good interpretation performance for utterances of different types and lengths.

We describe a probabilistic reference disambiguation mechanism developed for a spoken dialogue system mounted on an autonomous robotic agent. Our mechanism receives as input referring expressions containing intrinsic features of individual concepts (lexical item, size and colour) and features involving more than one concept (ownership and location). It then performs probabilistic comparisons between the given features and features of objects in the domain, yielding a ranked list of candidate referents. Our evaluation shows high reference resolution accuracy across a range of spoken referring expressions.

We describe a probabilistic reference disambiguation mechanism developed for a spoken dialogue system mounted on an autonomous robotic agent. Our mechanism performs probabilistic comparisons between features specified in referring expressions (e.g. size and colour) and features of objects in the domain. The results of these comparisons are combined using a function weighted on the basis of the specified features. Our evaluation shows high reference resolution accuracy across a range of spoken referring expressions.

We describe a probabilistic reference disambiguation mechanism developed for a spoken dialogue system mounted on an autonomous robotic agent. Our mechanism processes referring expressions containing intrinsic features of objects (lexical item, colour and size) and locative expressions, which involve more than one concept. The intended objects are identified in the context of the output of a simulated scene analysis system, which returns the colour and size of the seen objects and a distribution for their type. The evaluation of our system shows high resolution performance across a range of spoken referring expressions and simulated vision accuracies.

The DORIS project (Dialogue Oriented Roaming Interactive System) aims to develop a spoken dialogue module for an autonomous robotic agent. This paper examines the techniques used by Scusi?, the speech interpretation component of DORIS, to postulate and assess hypotheses regarding the meaning of a spoken utterance. The results of our evaluation are encouraging, yielding good interpretation performance for utterances of different types and lengths.