Paving the way for much more intuitive, interactive, and user-friendly ‘spoken dialogue technology’, DUMAS developed a multilingual speech-based system that creates new ways to communicate.

DUMAS, a three-year IST-funded project, began by developing the Athos platform, a generic and modular framework for multilingual speech-based systems. A consortium of eight partners from Sweden, Finland, Germany and the UK, its researchers built on basic speech technology, such as speech synthesis and recognition, and focused on dialogue level problems to develop systems that can process both spoken and text inputs in several languages, and provide appropriate verbal responses to the user.

DUMAS’ researchers produced 27 outputs on various levels, from research prototypes suitable for further exploration to fully commercialised and marketable products. Several results are in commercial use; five have commercial potential with a short lead time or are in the process of being commercialised at present; 12 are knowledge resources for exploitation in other research projects or in commercial products of various kinds; and five are advanced technology components for further research exploitation.

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