@InProceedings{lala-EtAl:2017:W17-55,
  author    = {Lala, Divesh  and  Milhorat, Pierrick  and  Inoue, Koji  and  Ishida, Masanari  and  Takanashi, Katsuya  and  Kawahara, Tatsuya},
  title     = {Attentive listening system with backchanneling, response generation and flexible turn-taking},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 18th Annual SIGdial Meeting on Discourse and Dialogue},
  month     = {August},
  year      = {2017},
  address   = {Saarbrücken, Germany},
  publisher = {Association for Computational Linguistics},
  pages     = {127--136},
  abstract  = {Attentive listening systems are designed to let people, especially senior
	people, keep talking to maintain communication ability and mental health.  This
	paper addresses key components of an attentive listening system which
	encourages users to talk smoothly. First, we introduce continuous prediction of
	end-of-utterances and generation of backchannels, rather than generating
	backchannels after end-point detection of utterances. This improves subjective
	evaluations of backchannels.  Second, we propose an effective statement
	response mechanism which detects focus words and responds in the form of a
	question or partial repeat.  This can be applied to any statement.  Moreover, a
	flexible turn-taking mechanism is designed which uses backchannels or fillers
	when the turn-switch is ambiguous.  These techniques are integrated into a
	humanoid robot to conduct attentive listening. We test the feasibility of the
	system in a pilot experiment and show that it can produce coherent dialogues
	during conversation.},
  url       = {http://aclweb.org/anthology/W17-5516}
}